


Shadowed

by orphan_account



Series: Shadowed [1]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bombings, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Cybercrimes, Dark!Felicity, F/M, Felicity Smoak & Helena Bertinelli - Freeform, Felicity Smoak/Billy Malone (past), Female Friendship, Grief, Guilt, I don't write romance, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Kidnapping, Not Romance, Oliver Queen/Helena Bertinelli (past), Oliver Queen/Susan Williams - Freeform, Roy Harper/Thea Queen - Freeform, Season 5B, Take-out food, bitches with wi-fi, but not Oliver or Felicity or Diggle, but season 5a happened, grrl power - Freeform, rating is more for violence than for sex, reference to suicide, spec fic, unreliable point of view
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-15 03:29:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9216632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Some people would deal with guilt and grief by seeing a therapist. Felicity Smoak breaks the Huntress out of prison, instead. (Diverges from show canon after Arrow 5.09. Mind the tags; if you don't like Arrow Season 5A, don't read this fic.)





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written during Season 5 hiatus, to explore the idea of grief leading Felicity to make some bad decisions. Oliver and Felicity get back together in this fic, but that's really an aside. The end reflects the things that I thought would happen in season 5B, rather than the logical outcome of the story.
> 
> One commenter said that Oliver was an ass in this story. I wanted him to call Felicity out for bad judgment, for once. (And yes, I think that kidnapping and threatening Susan Williams was a bad decision on Felicity's part; I think that the commenter was an ass.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Boys. Argh.

It all started because the boys simply wouldn’t listen.

It took over a week for Felicity to get anywhere with her search for Prometheus. Justin Claybourne’s son was born in the 1980s. That’s before all the recoding that banks had to do around Y2K. It was even before the Long September. TCP-IP barely existed. Banks used those weird pneumatic tubes to send files between floors. So it was no small feat to trace money transfers from Justin Claybourne to the mother of his child.

And bringing that information up to the present wasn’t simple, either. People moved. Kids grew up. Banks merged. Whole accounts were transferred to new institutions. Plus, someone had been trying to erase the digital footprints, and had done a fairly good job. But that someone hadn’t counted on Felicity Smoak.

“Ha!” Felicity pumped her fist. “3273 Peony Lane, Star City.” She spun around and saw...

Four men packing.

Packing?

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Packing,” said Curtis.

Boys. They’re nothing if they aren’t obvious.

“To go where?” Felicity let just a hint of a threat into her voice.

“To follow up on this lead,” Rene answered. It was NOT an answer.

Felicity glared at them.

Rory just shrugged and looked at Oliver.

“About Laurel,” Oliver finally said. “It doesn’t make sense. She remembered me, remembered being the Black Canary, but she didn’t remember...” He paused. As if Felicity were made of some kind of delicately spun glass and couldn’t deal with the word.

“Dying,” Felicity said.

The word hung in the stillness of the bunker like ash.

Oliver took a breath and looked at her. “Yes.”

Felicity stared at him for a moment. He didn’t look away. Her heart thumped once, twice, three times. “What was the lead?”

“After her latest disappearance, someone who looks like Laurel was seen in Central City,” Oliver said.

“Cisco used your facial recognition software,” Curtis interrupted. “He says it’s the best...”

 Felicity glared at Curtis until he stopped speaking. “How do you know it’s not a trap?”

All four of them looked at her. Then they looked at each other. Finally, Oliver spoke. “There was more information. From someone that Rene trusts.”

“Well, I don’t trust her not to kill me...” Rene muttered. Felicity wasn’t sure who he meant. She wasn’t sure that she cared.

“And that’s it?” She glared at them. “Prometheus is OUT THERE. He tricks people. He tricked John. He tricked OLIVER. How can you trust ANYTHING?”

The boys all looked at the floor. As if the floor had answers.

“I’ve got a lead, too,” Felicity said. “Bank records. Going back to the 1980s. Information that leads us straight to him.”

“Felicity,” Oliver said.

“I have thirty years of bank records,” Felicity said. “And an address.”

“How do you know that’s not the trap?” Curtis asked.

Felicity glared at him.

The boys looked at Oliver.

“Felicity,” Oliver said. The gentleness in his voice was like a wire brush dragged over her skin. “Do you want to come with us?”

She glared at him. “This is a bad idea.”

Oliver had the grace to look a little guilty.

“Four guys looking for a girl.” Felicity looked them over. “It’s like a bad bro comedy.”

“Three straight guys and one gay guy,” said Curtis.

 Felicity turned her glare at Curtis again. He winced and took a step back.

“It won’t be long,” Oliver said. “I’m sure you could stay with Thea...” He trailed off.

“I’ll be fine,” Felicity said.

She wasn’t. But she was not going to admit that to them.

***

They finished packing and left.

Felicity sat at her workstation and stared at the information. Leads like this were time-sensitive. There just wasn’t enough time to wait for the boys to get back from Central City.

She picked up her phone.

“Dad?” She paused, listened to his surprised, apparently affectionate, not-at-all-to-be-trusted words. “I need your help.” She paused again, listened to his voice saying that she could certainly hack anything she needed, she wouldn’t need his help.

She held the phone away from her ear until he was done.

“I need your help to break someone out of prison.” She listened for a while, then hung up.


	2. Justice is a Girl’s Best Friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Girls just wanna have justice. Or something like that.

Breaking someone out of Iron Heights wasn’t very hard.

Felicity should have known that by now. How many people had they put in prison, only to see them again, a year later? But for some reason, one person had stayed locked up.

The maintenance tunnel finally opened into the abandoned subway, and Felicity had enough room to pull off her ski mask.

The other woman crawled out behind her, orange jumpsuit filthy. She shook her long, dark hair loose and looked Felicity up and down. “I never would have taken you for a jailbreaker,” she said. “Oliver’s been teaching you all kinds of interesting things.”

Felicity held her eyes. “I need your help,” she said. “With justice.”

Helena Bertinelli looked at Felicity and smiled. “I’ve always liked justice.”

***

Felicity led the way into HIVE from the secret subway entrance. “You can stay here,” she said, handing over a towel and a pile of clothes. “There’s a bed set up and everything.”

“Looks like someone’s been staying here,” Helena noted.

“John Diggle was,” Felicity said. “Before the Feds caught him and took him back to prison.”

“Back?” Helena looked amused. “Mr. Straight-and-Narrow? What’s happened to all of you in the past two and a half years?”

“Lots of things,” Felicity said. “But they aren’t important. What’s important is that this place is still secure, and empty. At least for long enough to do this job. And when you’re done...”

“... You’ll give me a new identity and I’ll be free to go. You told me that already.” 

Felicity opened a duffel bag. “You’ll need this,” she said, pulling out Helena’s mask and crossbow. “We packed it away before the cops broke into the Foundry.”

“What about you? Has Oliver managed to dress you up yet?” Helena asked, looking at the mask, then picking up a bottle of shampoo instead.

“I don’t wear a mask,” Felicity said, leaving aside all the other possible answers that she might have given. “I don’t need one here. The computer does better identity concealment than a mask ever will, anyway.”

One shower and a change of clothes later, Helena was ready. Felicity gave her an earpiece, checked to be certain that she was transmitting on a different frequency than when she talked Oliver and the others, and talked Helena through the plan.

It was just reconnaissance tonight. Felicity might be confident in her information, but she knew better than to count on anything remaining the same for long. Check out the address, see if the target – Jeremiah Stanton, Justin Claybourne’s son, Prometheus - was staying there or just using the address as a decoy.

Felicity listed the things to look for: food, spare clothing, weapons.

Helena looked at her, amused.

***

It was a short mission. There was definitely someone living in the apartment. Male, based on the stubble and bits of shaving cream that coated the bathroom sink. The pile of newspapers in the living room was much neater than the bathroom, and didn’t give many clues about the owner’s obsessions (except that he actually read the news on paper, which was weird). The food in the refrigerator wasn’t moldy.

When Helena got back to HIVE, Felicity went home.

*** 

Silence echoed in the emptiness of the loft.

The ceiling was too high. The walls were too bare. Even the rug on the floor couldn’t dampen the sounds. The silence rattled in the corners, like a thousand voices.

When she had first heard the silent voices, last summer, she had fled to the brightest bar in the city and danced and laughed all night. She had returned to the loft with the first kind, uncomplicated man she had found.

Now his voice echoed in the empty corners with the others.

Felicity shook her head. She needed a change. A real change.

She grabbed a handful of things – clothes, bedding, shampoo – and headed back to HIVE.

***

Felicity had barely closed the door behind her when she heard the click of a safety.

“Don’t move.” Helena’s voice was as dangerous as ever.

Felicity set down her things, raised her hands, and turned towards Helena. “It’s just me.”

There was a puff of air as Helena released her breath – too near; Helena moved fast – and the safety clicked off. “If you don’t want me to shoot you, you shouldn’t sneak into places in the dark,” Helena said. “I’m a fugitive. Remember?”

“Oh, I know,” Felicity answered.

“If you were wearing that pink thing you had on this afternoon, you would show up better.” Helena’s eyes glinted in the dark. “What happened?”

Felicity shrugged. “I needed something different.”

*** 

HIVE was honeycombed with little rooms. (Felicity had made that joke to Oliver when they were renovating the space last summer. His amused smile had turned to worry when she laughed for five straight minutes at her own joke.) That meant that Felicity could set up her own space – a spare bed, her sheets, towels, piles of clothes – without intruding into Helena’s.

That didn’t keep Helena from intruding into hers.

“So,” Helena’s voice came from the doorway. “Where did John keep his food when he was in here?”

Felicity blinked the sleep out of her eyes and grabbed her glasses. Helena was standing there, towel wrapped around her wet hair, wearing what appeared to be Oliver’s sweatshirt. Felicity decided that she would need to make another clothing run soon. “There’s a refrigerator...” she waved her arm vaguely and realized the directions were too complicated to explain. “Fine. I’ll show you.”

The floor was cold under her feet. Felicity wrapped her green afghan around her shoulders and led the way across the main training space to another room.

“There’s a refrigerator in here. Microwave, hot plate, coffee pot...”

Helena grabbed the coffee pot. “This will do,” she said. “Though you should really get an espresso machine.”

“John prefers it simple. There’s a bag of coffee in the refrigerator.”

Helena found it, opened the bag, and sniffed, then sighed. “This is so much better than prison food already.”

Felicity opened a plastic bin on the floor. “There are filters in here.” She pulled out the package and handed it to Helena. “And the sink with the water is...”

“I see it,” Helena interrupted, carrying the pot over. “You want a whole pot?”

“Please,” Felicity said. She turned to another box. “We’ve got mugs in here.”

Helena turned on the coffee pot and dug through the box until she found a pair of pink and green mugs that said ‘World’s Best Boyfriend’ and ‘World’s Best Girlfriend.’ “Aww,” she said. “How sweet.” She sounded sarcastic.

Felicity grabbed the mugs and buried them back underneath a pile of bowls, then pulled out a couple of plain insulated travel cups. “These will be better.”

Helena looked like she was going to make another comment, but turned to look through a different bin instead. “Froot Loops?” she asked.

Felicity reached for the cereal box. “John’s got a kid. There should be a bunch of sugary stuff in there.” She pulled out a bowl and filled it.

Helena made a face. “You know what I’ve missed? _Bagels_. Good bagels. Poppy seed bagels, fresh from the oven, with just a little butter on them.” She dug a bit deeper. “I’ll take some decent granola, though.”

“Make a list, and I’ll go shopping later today,” said Felicity. “We’ll need more food if we’re both staying here.”

Helena put down the box of granola and looked at Felicity. “Look. This little sleepover is adorable, and it’s sweet of you to want to keep me company,” Helena said, “but I promise not to go on some kind of killing spree as soon as you look the other way.” 

“That’s good to know,” Felicity said, and spooned some cereal into her mouth.

Helena looked her over. “You used to talk more.”

Felicity set down her bowl and headed for the workstation in the main room. “You know you could shop for some new clothes online,” she suggested, brightly. “I could pick them up at the stores while I’m out.” She started tapping at the keyboard until several web sites came up.

Helena followed her and stood behind her shoulder. “I like that one,” she pointed. “And that. Oh, and those would be perfect for working out.”

“You should get something to sleep in, too,” Felicity said.

Helena smirked. “I wondered how long it would take before you got annoyed at me for wearing Oliver’s clothes.”

Felicity ignored her and pulled up a few options. Helena selected a couple, and clicked on the link to dresses. She stared at a purple one for a moment, then opened the shopping cart to complete the order. Felicity turned to look at her.

Helena shrugged. “Where would I wear it? I’m hiding in here except when I’m dressed as the Huntress.”

They were mostly quiet as they finished eating and making a grocery list. Well, “grocery” list. This one also included crossbow bolts.

***

Helena was practicing with her crossbow when Felicity got back from shopping. Her groupings weren’t great, Felicity noticed, at least in comparison with Oliver’s.

Helena put down her crossbow. “Yes, I’m out of practice,” she said, nodding at the same targets that Felicity had been looking at. “Keep that in mind when we make our move. And speaking of that...”

Felicity walked into the kitchen-room and started putting the groceries away. “Yes. I’ll tell you what we know about Prometheus.”

She outlined the entire history. The early mystery killings: the head of the Anti-Crime Unit and a wanna-be drug tycoon. The game of cat-and-mouse with Tobias Church’s cell phone, that had led to the bizarre staged drama with the torches and a message written in flames. The killings based on scrambling the names in Oliver’s father’s book. The attacks on Oliver’s allies: framing Lance, attacking Curtis at the holiday party. Evelyn’s betrayal. The clues they had followed – their abandoned suspicion that the SCPD was involved, and then the drug in Curtis’s blood, the trail of bodies, the final trick before the current silence.

Helena listened. She asked a few questions: when had Quentin Lance become an ally? When had Oliver started working with half-trained Olympic athletes and teenaged girls? What the hell were ‘magic rags’?

And then: “Why are _you_ doing this, and not Oliver? This sounds like his vendetta, not yours.” She smiled. It was kind of frightening. “And if Oliver’s anything like I remember, he wouldn’t want his perfect ray of sunshine to dirty her hands like this.”

Felicity looked into the shadows. A thousand ghosts looked back at her. Finally she looked at Helena and said: “I was dating the cop. The one killed at the end.”

Helena raised her eyebrows skeptically. “So you’re saying that you want vengeance against Prometheus for killing your boyfriend?”

Felicity nodded.

Helena shook her head. “Then why haven’t you even said his name? Your entire story was about Oliver.”

Felicity didn’t answer. Instead, she pulled up several files on the computer. “The drug in Curtis’s blood pointed us to Justin Claybourne. Who was one of the people Oliver killed four years ago. And he’s still dead – we ran DNA tests on his ashes. But according to his divorce records, he had a son, around Oliver’s age. I used bank records to trace the payments to the kid’s mother, and then to trace the kid – Jeremiah Stanton - back here, to Star City. To the apartment you checked out last night.” 

“And you want me to... what?” Helena asked.

“Kill him,” Felicity said. “Before anyone else dies.”

***

There weren’t many traffic cameras in that part of town, so Felicity had to rely on Helena to be her eyes. 

“ _New park here. Nice_ ,” Helena commented from the corner of 27th and Elm. “ _New this year?_ ”

“Yes,” Felicity said. “You need to take a different route this time to avoid traffic. Turn right when you get to 30th.”

“ _Streetlights look new, too_.”

“The city’s still rebuilding from earthquake damage, let alone everything else,” Felicity responded. “Take a left on Taylor.”

“ _Tell the mayor I approve_ ,” Helena said over the roar of her motorcycle. “ _If you ever tell him that you let me out._ ”

“The other end of Peony Lane should be coming up on your right,” Felicity said. “Is there a good place to hide your bike?”

There was a pause. “ _Not really,_ ” said Helena. “ _Too many police cars._ ”

“What?” Felicity scrambled for her keyboard and typed a few rapid-fire commands.

“ _Don’t you have access to the police frequencies?_ ” Helena asked. It sounded like she had dropped her motorcycle somewhere, and was moving quickly on foot.

“Getting them now,” Felicity said.

“ _You don’t monitor them regularly? I thought your boyfriend was a cop._ ” Helena stopped for a moment, then finished in a whisper. “ _You didn’t worry when he was out?_ " 

“I was usually busy on comms with the team,” Felicity said.

Helena snorted. “ _Sure,_ ” she said. “ _And you have no idea where Oliver is right now, too._ ”

Felicity glanced at the screen, where the four GPS trackers showed that the boys were at a karaoke bar in Central City. She wondered if Barry would get Oliver to sing. She wondered how much she would need to bribe Barry for video evidence.

“ _I’m at the apartment. The cops are all around it, but it’s pretty dark here. I’m going to get in through one of the fire escapes._ ” The comm went silent except for the sound of Helena’s breathing, and then footsteps starting, pausing, moving again.

Felicity waited and wondered what was going on.

There were a few more footsteps, then a door shutting. “ _I’ve got good news and bad news,_ ” Helena said. “ _The good news is that your target is dead. The bad news... someone else killed him. And from the way he was tied up, I think it was some of my father’s people._ ”

“Your father’s dead,” Felicity said.

“ _I know that,_ ” Helena replied. “ _I’m going to look around a bit more. Take some pictures._ ”

“Be careful,” Felicity said. “The cops are clearing out, but there might be others still there.”

“ _They’re my people,” Helena said. “I can handle them._ ”

***

Helena got back to HIVE without being seen, at least according to the chatter on the police radio. She strode across the room and dropped several plastic bags on a table. “Hope you like presents.”

“You shouldn’t have,” Felicity said. “Actually, you should. Is that hair?”

“And there’s blood on that cloth. I left the bullets for the police, but I grabbed one of the casings.” She put it on the table beside the bags. “I left everything else intact. Disturbing a crime scene isn’t a good way to get early parole.”

“Probably better than actually killing the guy.” Felicity examined each of the items.

“Actually...” Helena paused.

“What?” Felicity asked. A shiver ran down her back.

“One man was still in there. I shot him.” She pointed at a bag. “That blood is his.”

“Oh,” Felicity said.

“I dumped the body in Starling Bay. One of my father’s old spots. The tide should move it by morning.”

Felicity looked at the bags. “Let’s sequence this DNA and see who he was.”

***

The DNA came from four people. Some of the hair belonged to Jeremiah Stanton. The blood, plus the rest of the hair came from three people from the old Bertinelli crew.

“Joey Salvati?” Helena mused. “Oliver and I killed his brother Nick on our second date. Maybe third. It’s hard to remember.”

“How romantic,” said Felicity. “What about the casing?”

“It’s one of the calibers that my family uses,” Helena said. “That’s what they used to kill my fiancé.”

Felicity looked sharply at Helena. “Is that significant?”

“Only to me,” she said. “They use it for most executions.”

Felicity looked at the DNA sequencer and sighed.

“You know what we should do now?” Helena asked.

Felicity didn’t look up. “What?”

“We should get a bottle of nice red wine and drink the entire thing.” Helena smiled at Felicity’s startled look. “Maybe two bottles. Remember, I know how frustrating it is to have someone else take care of your revenge.”

***

Felicity woke first the next morning – well, afternoon, technically – and slipped out to run some errands. When she got back, Helena had just gotten out of the shower. She wore a bathrobe this time, Felicity noticed.

“What’s that?” Helena asked, looking at the bags.

Felicity set down two cups of coffee and pulled out a bottle of Tylenol from the first bag, and a bagel from the second.

Helena’s eyes lit up as she grabbed the bagel.

“Thank you,” Felicity said. “I’ve got several colors of hair dye, too, and scissors, if you want them.”

Helena frowned. A bagel crumb fell on her bathrobe.

“The job is done. Even if you didn’t technically do it. I’m ready to take care of my part of the bargain.” Felicity looked at the bottles. “I like blonde, but I think you would make a spectacular redhead.”

Helena picked up the coffee and used it to wash down a pair of Tylenols. “I like my hair.”

“It’s going to be hard to disappear into a new identity when you look like your old self. Especially with the internet. Somebody snaps your photo in a bar in Montana, and suddenly the FBI, Interpol, and your father’s old crew all know where you are, new name or not.”

“Maybe I’m not ready to run away to Montana,” Helena said.

“Well, I mean, that probably would be a bad idea, given your real name. You know, the state capital?” Felicity said. “But northern Minnesota? New Mexico? Saskatchewan?”

Helena shook her head. “Did it occur to you just how strange this all is? I mean, you break me out of prison to kill this guy. Someone who regularly beats Oliver. And we find him dead. And he’s killed by my people. And not just my people. By the brother of someone that Oliver and I killed?” She paused. “And it’s not just that. I killed someone again. Another someone... not our target.”

“You didn’t have a choice,” said Felicity. “Did you?”

“I don’t know,” Helena said. “I spent the past two and a half years going over all the times when I killed people, wondering what happened to their families, wondering what I could ever do to make up for it. I finally felt like I was ready to be out. But now... I keep thinking about things I could have done differently last night. If I had just hidden behind a door, or if I had been a bit quieter and he hadn’t seen me...”

Felicity turned away. Suddenly the room seemed too small, like it was filled with missiles and bombs and fire and voices crying. She shook her head and went over to the computer and tapped a few keys.

“I think you earned parole,” Felicity said. “No matter what happened last night.”

And with a few more key taps and mouse clicks, Helena was free.

***

They spent most of the afternoon running various searches on Joey Salvati, and people who owed favors to his family, and people whose favors owed favors to the Salvatis. Nothing obvious popped up, so Felicity introduced Helena to a couple new videogames, and Helena taught Felicity to fire a crossbow. Cocking the bow left her shoulder sore, but it took her mind off of everything.

They were working their way through a couple containers of Chinese take-out when Felicity’s phone buzzed. She glanced at it.

“It’s Oliver,” she said, and showed the text to Helena.

_OQ: heading back_

_OQ: do we have spare bandages?_

_OQ: everyone’s alive_

_OQ: ps you were right_

Helena raised her eyebrows, and Felicity shrugged. “I told him not to give incriminating details in text messages, in case the cellular companies get hacked or are sending info to the NSA.”

“What does he mean, 'you were right'?” Helena asked.

“It was a trap,” Felicity replied, and picked up her chopsticks.

Another message came, this time from Curtis. Helena squinted at it. “What is he trying to say?" 

Felicity glanced at it. There was a string of emojis, including some that appeared to represent fire, explosions, some kind of bladed weapon, and a tsunami. “I’ll have to get the story in person.” She began gathering her things.

“Is anyone going to come here?” Helena paused. “What are you going to tell Oliver?”

Felicity thought for a moment. “I don’t know how fragile the team is right now. I mean, they were upset when they found out about the list. And Oliver’s still obsessed with figuring out what’s up with Laurel.”

“And you think a fugitive murderer might not go over so well?”

“They also might not be pleased to hear that I’m offering my own digital immunity to inmates of Iron Heights.” Felicity opened a drawer. “What do you think about staying on comms while I check in with them?” 

Helena raised her eyebrows. “That could be fun.”

***

Oliver came through the elevator door first, half-supporting a battered-looking Rene. Curtis had a bandage around his head. Rory looked unharmed, as usual.

Felicity ran to take Rene’s other side and guide him to the med table. “Couldn’t Caitlin help with this?”

“She did,” Oliver said.

“So...?” Felicity pulled out clean bandages, then gave Oliver a look.

“You were right,” Oliver said. “It was a trap.”

“I gathered that from your text,” Felicity said. “How about some details?”

“The woman – the woman in Central City, the woman who was here - wasn’t Laurel. She was a metahuman from some other Earth, according to Barry. Cisco calls her ‘Black Siren.’”

Felicity heard a choking noise over the comms. Oh, yeah. Helena didn’t know about metahumans.

“And what did she want?” Felicity asked.

“Nothing good,” Rory said.

“She was pissed at Oliver,” Curtis added.

Felicity looked at Oliver, who shrugged.

“I guess Earth 2 Oliver Queen was a prick,” Rene said.

Helena snorted over the comms. Felicity forced herself not to crack a smile.

Rene peeled off one of his dirty bandages. Felicity grimaced. “Those look like second-degree burns.” She looked defensively at Oliver. “I took a first aid course while you were gone, the summer after the Undertaking.”

Oliver nodded. “I know.”

Felicity looked at Rene. “So where did the burns come from?”

Oliver answered for him. “Black Siren took his kids.”

“You had kids? In Central City? And you didn’t tell any of us?” Felicity shook her head. “We need a new team rule: NO SECRET CHILDREN.”

Helena laughed through the comms. “ _There’s a story there..._ ”

Oliver looked grim and a little sad, but continued anyway. “We couldn’t find them until today.”

“But we got them out,” Rory added.

“We even got them out before the explosion,” Curtis said. “Or at least before the fire got too bad.”

“Is that where the burns came from?” Felicity asked.

Everyone nodded. “Rene distracted Black Siren while Rory and I herded them out,” Curtis said. “Tough kids, by the way. They weren’t even scared of the rags.”

“My dad used to tell stories while he was wearing the rags,” Rory said. “I just pretended I was him.”

Felicity bit her lip and nodded at Rory. He nodded quietly back. 

“None of us would have gotten out alive if it hadn’t been for Oliver, though,” Rene said. “I thought Oliver was a badass before, but that was something else.”

Felicity looked at Oliver. He ducked his head. “I know you’ve fought friends before, especially under mind control,” Felicity said.

Helena made a choking noise over the comms.

“But fighting someone who looked like Laurel must have been really hard,” Felicity continued.

Oliver frowned. “Prometheus doesn’t look like Laurel.”

Felicity and Helena sucked in breaths at the same time. “Prometheus was in Central City? Today?”

The boys all nodded, totally synchronized.

“That was the knife emoji,” Curtis said. “The tsunami was Barry’s work.”

Felicity took a breath. Her hands were shaking. “Well,” she said, “at least nobody died.” She looked around at each of them. “Right?”

“Right,” they echoed. Synchronized answering, too.

“So what happened to everyone else?” Felicity asked.

“Barry is dealing with Black Siren. Rene’s...” Oliver looked at Rene. Rene just shrugged. “Rene’s kids are with their mother again.”

“She is so pissed,” Rene said.

“We actually had to leave town fast before she killed him,” Curtis said.

Rene glared at him. Oliver held up his hands to settle them down.

“Prometheus?” Felicity asked. She dug her fingernails into her palms.

Oliver shook his head.

Felicity took several breaths. “I need some air.”

The boys pulled back and gave her space to get to the elevator. “ _Coming back here?_ ” Helena asked over the comms.

The elevator doors closed. “Yes,” Felicity answered. “I’m coming back. We still have work to do.”


	3. Mysteries

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mysteries need to be solved.

Felicity and Helena were up half the night (drinking coffee, not wine, this time), plotting out possibilities. If Prometheus wasn’t Jeremiah Stanton, who could he be? Joey Salvati? Maybe, but would he have known anything about the list? His brother’s connection to the list was through Helena’s father. Maybe Joey could have wanted to go after the Green Arrow – the Bertinellis had been part of Tobias Church’s drug consolidation – but so had the Triad and Los Halcones.

Maybe it was actually a set-up by the Triad! Framing the Bertinellis was consistent with everything else the Triad did. And Chien na Wei had a grudge against the Arrow, and could do crazy leaping fighting moves. (The Bertinellis were more into guns, brass knuckles, and extortion; not so much into backflips, Helena pointed out.) But Oliver had said something about a particular move that he learned in Russia.

Wait! Russia! Could this have been set up by the Bratva? They hadn’t been very active in Star City in years, since Oliver had cut his ties with them. Could they be trying to move back in on the territory? Except, again, they would have gone after Oliver Queen, not the Green Arrow. And Prometheus had gone after the Green Arrow first.

Maybe it was actually more than one person. Like... a league of people. The League of Assassins didn’t exist any more. (And whose fault was that? At least in part? No points for guessing a very green someone whose last name started with “Q.”) And what do unemployed assassins do? They have a very particular skill set.

Felicity looked at Helena. “I’ve got an idea.” She tapped a few keys, and left the search to run overnight.

***

Felicity had, fortunately, managed to wake up and get to the bunker before Oliver stalked in at lunchtime, suit rumpled like it had been a rough morning.

Oliver looked at her, then around at the empty room. “Hey,” he said, hesitantly.

“Hey,” Felicity responded brightly, trying to make her smile match the colors in her dress. “How’s City Hall?”

“There were get-well cards all over my desk. Apparently Thea told people that I had swine flu?” Oliver shook his head.

“I hope that Susan Williams didn’t take that as an excuse to do a report on government pork,” Felicity said.

“She’s out of town on an assignment. Fortunately, because I don’t think the swine flu excuse would fly with her. We don’t need any investigative reporting right now, given everything Adrian Chase had to tell me this morning,” Oliver responded.

“What’s going on?” Felicity asked, as innocently as possible.

“Remember Jeremiah Stanton? Justin Claybourne’s son?”

Felicity nodded vigorously. “I was the one who found him.”

“I remember,” Oliver said. “And I remember that you had an address, and wanted us to go after him.”

Felicity nodded a little harder. She wondered briefly if people could turn into bobbleheads. 

“He’s dead,” Oliver said, and waited for a response.

“Oh,” Felicity said, then tried to look more surprised. “Oh! Um, what happened?”

“Shot in the head while tied to a chair. The police are still working through the forensic evidence, but they think it looks like the work of the Bertinellis.”

Felicity wrapped a strand of hair around her finger, hiding the comm in her ear. “Do they have DNA evidence or anything? Because, you know, that could be useful. To, you know, recognize if it was really them.”

“Chase is wondering whether there’s more to the story than a mob war. He’s already figured out that Stanton was Justin Claybourne’s son.” 

“Does he know about Claybourne’s connection to...” Felicity’s voice trailed off.

“I don’t know.” Oliver paused. “I don’t think Billy told anyone what he figured out.”

Felicity just nodded.

“Chase wants to talk to people who know the Bertinelli gang.”

“Great idea,” Felicity said. “So are you planning to deliver some of them to the SCPD?”

“Actually, he wanted to talk to Helena,” Oliver said.

Felicity heard Helena suck in her breath over the comms.

“She hasn’t been in touch with her father’s people for years,” Oliver continued, “but she knows how they work, and Chase thought he could arrange early parole in exchange for information.”

“Oh,” Felicity said.

“But it turns out that Helena was released on parole three days ago. Without knowledge of the District Attorney.” Oliver ran his hands through his hair. “Chase is furious. And what’s worse, nobody seems to know who granted her parole, and her assigned parole officer died last year.”

“So you think...” Felicity stalled. 

“So I think that someone falsified her files.”

“Really,” Felicity said.

“I was hoping that you could figure out who that was.” Oliver looked at her.

Felicity just looked back at him.

“Hoping that you _would_ , I mean,” Oliver amended. “Obviously you can. You’re the best at this.”

“Oh! Yes. I mean, of course I’ll look into it.” Felicity started typing. The letters didn’t actually do anything, but Oliver wouldn’t know that.

“This could be an important clue,” Oliver added.

“Hmm?” Felicity said.

“We’re back to square one about Prometheus. We need ideas.”

“Oh,” Felicity said. “Oh! You think Prometheus released Helena?”

Oliver nodded.

“But... why?” 

Oliver shrugged. “Everything he’s done so far connects to things that happened soon after I got back from the island. That’s when I met Helena. It fits. But I don’t know whether he wants to get Helena to help him, or if he wants to hurt her.” He paused. “I know you don’t like her. But remember, she went back to prison voluntarily after she helped rescue you that summer. I don’t want to see her in Prometheus’ hands.”

“ _That’s sweet,_ ” Helena said in Felicity’s ear. “ _Though I think rescuing YOU gave me more points than going back to prison did._ ”

“I’ll see what I can dig up,” Felicity said.

“Thank you,” Oliver said. But he didn’t step away. “Also... Thea said she stopped by the loft to see how you were doing.”

“Hmmm?” Felicity looked up at him, face disciplined.

“She said that it looked like you hadn’t been there in a few days.” He looked like he was searching for the right words. “She may have broken in.”

“She did train with Malcolm,” Felicity tried to joke.

“Are you...” Oliver stopped, obviously forcing his face into something less worried. “I hope you’re ok. If you need anything...”

“I know where to find you!” Felicity said as brightly as possible. 

Oliver nodded, and headed back to the mayor’s office.

***

It was a long day in the bunker.

Felicity had hacked a lot of things in her day. Prisons, police, Department of Ed, NSA, CIA, FBI, ARGUS. She had fought cyber-attacks from her own viruses.

However, she hadn’t ever had to hack into her own work. At least, not with the goal of failing to find out anything.

Finally, she decided to do some complicated misdirecting. Make it look like someone else had faked the parole paperwork. A few digital breadcrumbs here, a hint about the identity there. The hints pointed vaguely towards the Triad – they were known to do some fairly sophisticated hacking, so they were plausible suspects – but nothing so specific that the police would find an actual person to bring in for questioning.

She had just closed that window when Curtis came in. He tried to start a conversation, but it just didn’t feel right. Felicity made a half-hearted attempt at humor and enthusiasm, but the front was getting hard to keep up. Finally, she pleaded hunger and headed out.

*** 

Felicity walked into HIVE carrying two containers of take-out sushi. Helena seemed like the type to enjoy sashimi, and Felicity was willing to bet that the kitchen at Iron Heights didn’t have seaweed. Or sushi rice. Or raw fish, other than uncooked fishsticks. Her hands were full, so she had to keep the door open with her hips. That’s why she didn’t see anything until the door closed behind her.

“Eep!” Felicity yelped as she tried (and failed) to keep the sushi containers from falling.

Fortunately, the new arrival caught them.

“I have arrived,” said Nyssa.

“I see,” said Felicity as she regained her balance.

“Did you not expect me to be here?” Nyssa asked. “You contacted me.”

“I started a digital search for you,” Felicity said. “I didn’t even know where you were.”

“I was not far away,” Nyssa said. “This place is as much my home as any other.”

“So." Felicity flailed around for a topic of conversation. “What have you been doing, Nyssa? Given, you know, that your old job has been eliminated?”

“I am working in a bookstore,” Nyssa said.

“And knitting,” Helena added, lifting two skeins of yarn into the air. “She’s teaching me.”

“Knitting,” Felicity said.

“Yes,” said Nyssa. “I have made 40 sweaters for refugee children.”

“Wow,” said Felicity.

“I am hoping that stories about them will reach Sara as she travels in the future, and that she will rejoin me. We dreamed of traveling the world together, free of the commands of men.”

“You didn’t tell me your friends were time travelers,” Helena said.

“It doesn’t solve anything. Trust me,” Felicity said.

“Knitting is like meditation, or sword-fighting,” Nyssa said.

“And she has at least ten ways she can kill people with those needles,” Helena added.

“That’s the least surprising thing I’ve heard since I walked in,” Felicity said. “Speaking of which, I brought sushi.”

As they ate, Felicity explained the Prometheus situation to Nyssa. When they got to the part about Jeremiah Stanton’s death, Helena took over. They laid out the possible suspects, including the entire remnants of the League of Assassins, and waited for Nyssa’s response.

“Perhaps those who are still loyal to my father – or to Malcolm Merlyn, though there are few enough of those – could be responsible for this. It is impossible to know for sure unless I see them fight,” said Nyssa. “But I do not understand how this is vengeance for you. Are you not simply trying protect your beloved?”

“That’s what I said,” Helena chimed in.

Felicity ignored them. “I don’t know what the next step with Prometheus is,” she said, “but I’ve been trying to keep Oliver and the SCPD away from Helena.”

“Helena is not threat to you and Oliver,” Nyssa said. 

“Not any more,” Helena said, somewhat regretfully.

“Oliver and I are not the point,” Felicity insisted. “Prometheus is. The SCPD is looking for Helena to find out more about the Bertinelli organization, and Oliver thinks Helena could lead him to Prometheus. I’ve set up a lot of digital misdirection, but I don’t know how much more time we’ll have before they see through it.”

“I will ask those who are loyal to me what they have heard,” Nyssa offered. “And Helena may stay with me above the bookstore, if she chooses.”

“Are there windows?” Helena asked. “I miss windows." 

And so Nyssa and Helena started to pack Helena’s things, while Felicity headed back to the other team.

***

When Felicity got to the bunker, Curtis, Rene, and Rory were all standing in the workout area, surreptitiously watching Oliver. He was pacing back and forth, head slightly bowed, not looking at anything, hands and lips moving.

“What’s he doing?” Felicity whispered.

“It’s Digg’s trial,” Rene said.

“Adrian Chase agreed to be Digg’s defense attorney,” Curtis added.

“I know,” Felicity said. “But what’s Oliver doing?”

“Oliver’s gonna be a character witness,” Rene said.

“Oh,” said Felicity.

“I’ve never seen him this nervous,” Rory noted.

“Except when he wanted to ask Felicity...” Curtis broke off at Felicity’s look.

“He isn’t usually called as a witness,” said Felicity. “He doesn’t want to make a mistake.”

Oliver turned, stopped, and took a breath. He looked into the middle distance, stilled his hands, and started to speak. “John Diggle is the best man I know,” he said. “I would trust him with my life.” Oliver glanced down once, at a piece of paper in his hand, and started to give examples.

Felicity bit her lip and hoped the tears welling in her eyes didn’t actually show.

“Wow,” Curtis said. “I thought he gave good speeches as mayor.”

“Makes you wanna live up to that, you know?” said Rene. “Like, I wish I could be the kind of person he talks about like that.”

Felicity made a noise of agreement.

“Actually, Felicity, he says things like that about you all the time.” Rory gave her a quizzical look. “Didn’t you know that?”

Felicity watched Oliver for a moment longer, and then went over to her computer and got to work.

By the time Felicity left, she had put together a list of all of the Bertinelli family’s current associates – the ones who were neither dead nor in prison, that is.

***

HIVE was dark and empty when Felicity finally returned. The crossbow and bolts had been neatly put away in a corner. The coffee pot was left plugged in, timer set to brew in the morning.

Felicity toed off her shoes, replaced her dress with a pair of fuzzy jammie bottoms and a t-shirt, huddled on her bed, and tapped the remote control for the lights.

The darkness curled around her like a threat. The silence echoed, too loud for sleep. She wrapped her afghan around her shoulders and sat on the bed, looking from Cooper’s half-visible body dangling from a rafter to Billy’s blank eyes, to the things with Rory’s face and translucent, glowing skeletons, like characters in a bad 80s movie about nuclear holocaust.

She must have fallen over, exhausted, sometime in the night, because she woke with a dry mouth and the afghan halfway off her shoulders, shivering on top of the covers.

***

Felicity got to the bunker early. She was already tapping at her keyboard when Oliver emerged from his room, dressed in his suit for the courtroom. He nodded at her, then took a deep breath and wiped his palms on his pants.

“This isn’t your normal rescue mission, is it?” Felicity forced herself to quip.

Oliver huffed out a laugh. “It feels like it would be easier with a bow,” he confessed.

Felicity put on her brightest, most hopeful smile and looked Oliver in the eyes. “You can do it, Oliver,” she said. “You can bring John back.”

Oliver looked at her for a second, and Felicity wondered if her mask had slipped. But instead, he took a breath and nodded. “I’ll have to go by City Hall afterwards,” he said. “I’ll see the team tonight.”

He left, and Felicity slumped over the keyboard, already exhausted.

***

Felicity clicked through her feeds, skipping through missing pets and noise complaints to look for anything that needed intervention, or that felt weird enough to go into the Prometheus mystery file. Nothing, nothing...

Uh-oh. 

_A shooting outside a nightclub in the east Glades last night resulted in two deaths. Police have identified one of the bodies as Joey Salvati. Identification of the second man is awaiting notification of next of kin._

Felicity looked around the bunker. Fortunately, Curtis and Rene and Rory were busy doing... something. It may have been a drill to practice hiding behind the rags. She pulled out her secondary phone and texted the burner phone she had given Helena.

***

Helena and Nyssa were already at HIVE when Felicity arrived with lunch. Nyssa, it seemed, knew how to slip through the world unnoticed, even in daytime, and she had brought Helena with her. Assassin training came in pretty handy.

“It was the Triad,” Helena said. “They’re the only ones in the city who use that caliber.”

Felicity frowned. “When I covered up the digital tracks for your parole, I tried not to make the misdirection obvious,” she said. “But the hints pointed towards the Triad. That can’t be a coincidence.”

“Who’s good enough with computers to do that?” Helena asked.

“The Triad,” Felicity counted off on her fingers. “ARGUS. The SCPD had some decent experts in computer forensics, back in the day, at least – Quentin Lance found me before the Undertaking based on their work.”

“When Malcolm Merlyn became Ra’s al Ghul, he sought computer expertise for the League,” Nyssa added.

“Of course he did,” Felicity said. “Malcolm frakking Merlyn.” She shook her head in disgust. “So Prometheus could be tied to the Triad, or the League, or all sorts of other people. This doesn’t help us much.” She shook her head. “I need to get back to the bunker. They’ll be wondering where I am.”

***

Oliver texted briefly after lunch. Things sounded positive for John, at least from a handful of words and one difficult-to-interpret emoji.

The rest of the team cleared out for a while in the afternoon – Rory was working on a new sculpture, Curtis had to do the grocery shopping now that Paul had moved out, and Rene muttered something vague about obligations. Felicity had time alone to run her searches, trying to figure out who had dug into Helena’s file. Someone had. There were hints in the electronic traffic going to the prison’s server. If she could just figure out where that traffic had originated...

Oliver came in, suddenly, looking worried. Felicity closed her window, even though the strings of numbers wouldn’t mean much to him.

“What’s wrong?” Felicity asked.

“The police finished the DNA tests from Jeremiah Stanton’s murder. There were three people there besides Stanton. Two of them were just found dead, probably killed by the Triad.”

Felicity clicked through the day’s feed as if this were new information.

“Stop,” Oliver said. “Those two, I think. But it gets worse.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “The third suspect’s body just washed up in the bay. He was actually Triad – he had been infiltrating the Bertinellis for a while, according to the SCPD.”

“Oh,” Felicity said.

“He died from a crossbow bolt.” Oliver sighed. “Helena’s work.”

***

“... and the SCPD is searching for you now. The DA is pretty upset.” Felicity ended.

Helena took another bite of pizza. “What about Oliver?”

“What do you mean?” Felicity asked.

“He works closely with Adrian Chase, doesn’t he? Isn’t Chase currently defending John Diggle?” She stole an olive from Felicity’s slice. “If Oliver finds me, is he going to deliver me straight to the SCPD?”

“I don’t know,” Felicity said. “Let’s not find out. Let’s get Prometheus first.”

Helena and Nyssa nodded.

“First things: what do you two think about the Triad’s involvement with Prometheus now? More or less likely?”

“Less, I think,” Helena said. “It’s an obvious trail, to connect me to a new mob war.”

“Agreed,” said Nyssa.

“So then the clues are going to have to come from the computer traffic,” Felicity said. “That means I need to track down those IP addresses - and make Oliver think I’m searching for Helena.”

***

Things were quiet in the bunker the next day. Or at least, the boys didn’t keep looking over Felicity’s shoulder, and she was free to pull together all the internet traffic connecting to Helena’s parole record. Then, she had to filter out the traffic from known sources. The SCPD, which started checking just after Jeremiah Stanton’s death. A few other law enforcement agencies, probably called in by the SCPD. Her own tracks, routed in ways to obscure the source. And... an address that didn’t fit any of those patterns. Felicity started running scripts to identify it, hid her window, and started a random conversation with Curtis about future job opportunities.

***

Nyssa brought lunch from a bakery near the bookstore. Felicity walked around, thinking and eating her sandwich, while Nyssa taught Helena some ground-fighting moves.

“You should practice with the bag a bit,” Helena called from the mat, where Nyssa had her pinned. “It might clear your head. It helps me.”

Felicity took a turn punching, thinking about the problem and hitting the bag as if it would give up the answers if she hit it hard enough. Suddenly, there were a pair of hands on her hips and she spun around, hands up...

“Turn your hips like this,” Nyssa demonstrated.

Felicity breathed out, turned back to the bag, and tried to imitate Nyssa. Helena moved to her other side, punching the air beside her.

“This is the weirdest exercise class I’ve ever been in,” Felicity grumbled, and hit the bag harder.

***

When she got back to the bunker, the scripts had produced a list of all the domain names that had connected with the parole files. She read through them, noting the ones that were repeated. One of them seemed familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it.

Curtis came over to her workstation. “As my former boss, would you be willing to look over my resumé?” he asked.

“Sure,” Felicity replied, closing her window before he could look at it. She skimmed through the resumé, making a few notes with her red pen. “Where are you applying?”

“A few different places, but the most promising one is TechStar.” Curtis must have seen the surprised look on her face. “I know it’s a dumb name.”

“No, that’s not it. It’s just... where have I heard that name before?” She looked as innocently curious as possible.

Fortunately, Curtis wasn’t in a very observant mood. “They’re a distant corporate relative of ours, if you think of companies that way. You and I worked for Palmer Tech – well, you were the CEO, so you kind of _were_ Palmer Tech.”

“If I had been the entire company, they wouldn’t have fired me,” Felicity responded.

“Right. Well, Palmer Tech used to be Queen Consolidated, which you also know, because that’s how you met Oliver...”

“Yes,” Felicity said, trying not to be impatient.

“And the Applied Sciences division of Queen Consolidated used to be Unidac Industries. QC acquired them in 2012...”

“I remember,” Felicity said, tapping her pen on the desk.

“Well, before Unidac was auctioned off, they had to lay off a bunch of their employees. ‘Restructuring,’ you know?” Curtis laughed. Felicity didn’t. “The old Unidac employees started their own company, which eventually became TechStar.”

Felicity nodded to herself.

Curtis didn’t leave. “So knowing that, do you have any suggestions about things I should highlight? Do you think they would be interested in my T-sphere?”

Felicity shook her head. “No. I think that would be a bad idea. At the very least, you shouldn’t mention it until you’ve got a way to keep it from exploding.”

When Curtis finally left her alone, Felicity looked up current information about TechStar. Most tech companies don’t have any reason to repeatedly probe the Huntress’s parole files, after all.

***

Nyssa was working a late shift at the bookstore, so Helena went alone to check out TechStar. It was just recon. Right?

Felicity had the comm in her ear, on a different frequency from the boys. There was a robbery in progress on the other end of town, so she sent them on their way. Two sets of comms. Two different frequencies. She could multitask.

“The door should be unlocked now,” she said to Helena, then muted that comm. “Green Arrow, all clear. Though I don’t know why a sporting goods store is the target.”

     “ _Ammunition,_ ” said Rene.

     “ _Or crossbow bolts,_ ” said Oliver.

          “ _I’m in,_ ” said Helena on the other comm. “ _What am I looking for?_ ”

Felicity muted Oliver’s channel, and replied, “According to the building plans, the IT department should be on the second floor, towards the back of the building.”

     “ _There’s someone back here,_ ” whispered Rory from Oliver’s channel.

     “ _Stay in place until I give the word,_ ” said Oliver.

     “ _That means you, Wild Dog._ ” Curtis had apparently taken over the snark role on the team.

     “ _He learned his lesson last time,_ ” Oliver growled. “ _Knock it off._ ”

          Helena spoke on the other comm. “ _There’s a keypad on this door._ ”

Felicity muted a line. “I’ll get it.”

     “ _What’s that, Overwatch?_ ” Oliver asked. Oops. Wrong line.

“Nothing, Green Arrow. Any sign of the intruder?”

     “ _Not yet,_ ” Oliver replied.

Felicity muted the line and tapped a few keys on her keyboard. “You should be able to get in now.”

          “ _What am I looking for, exactly?_ ” Helena asked.

“I just need you to pull some files from one of the computers. Anything with a keyboard should do.” Felicity responded.

          “ _Got one,_ ” Helena said.

“I see it,” Felicity said. “Digitally, I mean. If there’s anything you need to show me, remember you can text a photo from your phone.”

         “ _Right,_ ” Helena replied. There was a tapping sound.

Felicity ran a quick bit of code to override the password, and Helena was in. “Take the flash drive and just copy everything. Do you remember the command?”

         “ _Got it,_ ” Helena said.

     “ _Stop right there!_ ” Oliver’s modulated voice came over the other comm.

     “ _I was hoping a break-in would get your attention,_ ” came a woman’s voice. No, a teenager’s.

     “ _I’m going to kill her,_ ” Curtis said.

     “ _Evelyn..._ ” said Oliver, still modulated. “ _What are you doing?_ ”

     “ _Looking for another chance,_ ” Evelyn said.

     “ _Hey Overwatch, do you think this is a trap?_ ” Rory’s whispers were bizarre. Especially over the comms.

“Checking the traffic cams and surveillance videos...” Felicity clicked through windows on her screen. “No sign of Prometheus. Though I’ve never caught him on camera before.”

          “ _What? You think Prometheus is here?_ ” asked Helena.

“Sorry, no, wrong channel.” Felicity switched frequencies. “Ragman, I don’t see anything strange. Well, stranger than what I’m hearing.” She checked the history of the traffic cameras to make sure they weren’t looping old footage. “No, no sign of Prometheus on the traffic cams or on the store surveillance.”

     “ _Why? Why do you expect another chance?_ ” Oliver asked Evelyn. “ _Why should we trust you?_ ”

     “ _You shouldn’t,_ ” said Evelyn. “I _t’s just... what Prometheus was doing didn’t make any sense. And then he went after Rene’s kids, and I remembered something Felicity told me. About the time when you let a dad go back to his kid because she asked you to._ ”

     “ _What do you want from us?_ ” Oliver’s voice was still modulated, but it sounded a bit more gentle.

     “ _A chance to apologize. And then I’ll go... I don’t know where. Maybe Hub City. I can’t go back to the homeless shelter. They would just put me back into foster care, and that didn’t work out the first time._ ” Evelyn’s voice shook the tiniest bit.

     “ _What did you want from a sporting goods store?_ ” Rene seemed a bit hung up on the details.

     “ _Attention,_ ” Evelyn said. “ _Maybe some arrows. Definitely some Clif Bars. I haven’t had anything to eat in two days._ ”

     There was a pause. “ _Overwatch, we’re coming home._ ”

“Maybe get Big Belly Burger,” Felicity suggested. “That’s the food of choice for reunions.”

     “ _Will do._ ” Oliver’s laugh sounded odd with the modulator on.

“Though maybe send someone in without a mask,” Felicity suggested.

     “ _I can take the rags off,_ ” offered Rory in his whisper.

          “ _What’s this thing with all the wires?_ ” Helena asked on the other comm. “ _I’m texting you a photo._ ”

Felicity managed to mute the correct frequency this time as she looked at her phone. “Oh, frak,” she said.

          “ _I assume that isn’t good,_ ” Helena said.

“No,” Felicity answered. “It’s a bomb. Or at least, it looks like a bomb. Take a picture from the other side.”

          “ _There are numbers over here,_ ” Helena said.

The photo came through. The numbers said ’00:02:30’.

“Double frak,” Felicity muttered. “Ok. It’s a bomb. Do you have anything sharp with you?”

          “ _Like crossbow bolts?_ ” asked Helena.

“Those might do,” Felicity said. “Now, find the yellow wires.” She paused. “I think. And take two of your bolts to cut the wire, because you’ve got to do it fast.”

          The comms were silent for a moment. Then: “ _I’ve almost got it._ ”

          Then there was the sound of a modulated voice. Not Oliver’s. “ _Don’t move!_ ”

“Who’s there?” Felicity asked. “And can you convince him that you need to focus on the bomb?”

          “ _Guy with a weird ski mask and a big gun,_ ” Helena said. “ _Another one of Oliver’s?_ ”

“No,” Felicity said. “That guy doesn’t have Oliver’s restraint. We call him ‘Vigilante,’ which is a ridiculous name, more of a title, really.”

           “ _Lower your gun if you don’t want to die,_ ” said Helena loudly.

            That wasn’t an ideal opening for negotiations. The modulated voice laughed. “ _Are you going to kill me with that crossbow, Ms. Bertinelli?_ ”

            “ _No,_ ” Helena said. “ _But this bomb might, if I don’t defuse it. In..._ ” She paused, as if checking. “ _...thirty seconds._ ”

            “ _Why should I believe that?_ ” the Vigilante asked.

“Helena, you need to get out of there,” Felicity warned. “You don’t have much time, and your crossbow doesn’t come with a zip line.”

There was a crash of broken glass and a soft thump, like someone landing.

            “ _Come,_ ” said Nyssa.

And then there was an explosion.


	4. I Heard the News Today

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity is annoyed by the media. Well, by one person in particular. (Also, mind the tags.)
> 
> Title is a line from "A Day in the Life" by the Beatles. If you know the lyrics, you'll also know which tag warnings to heed.

Felicity had the news open – several different stations – when the boys got back with Evelyn. Helena and Nyssa had checked in a few minutes earlier to let her know that they weren’t hurt, and were on their way back to HIVE.

“ _Sources say that an escaped criminal known as the Huntress is thought to be responsible for the bombing of TechStar_ ,” Susan Williams was saying.

Oliver walked up behind Felicity and watched.

“She got back from her assignment,” Felicity said.

Oliver nodded.

“I guess TechStar won’t be hiring me now,” Curtis commented.

Everyone glared at him. Everyone except Evelyn, who was hanging off to the side.

“Is this Prometheus’ work?” Felicity asked Evelyn. “Did he send you to be a distraction so he could do this?”

Evelyn shook her head vigorously. “I had no idea. He never mentioned anything about any kind of targets.” She paused. “I didn’t even know what he was planning to do to Detective Malone. I’m so sorry, Felicity.”

Felicity looked away.

“Besides, they’re blaming this on the Huntress,” Rene said.

“Except that Adrian Chase thought the Huntress was working with Prometheus, right?” Rory asked.

Oliver nodded. “I texted Chase, but he didn’t respond.” He set his mask and bow down. “I’m going to change. Evelyn...” he paused and shook his head. “We need to talk. But you need to eat something first, ok?”

Rene took his hand out of the bag and handed it to Evelyn. “Sorry.”

“You can have some fries,” she offered.

“ _Next, we’ll talk to some terrorism experts about why Star City has been such a frequent target..._ ” Susan Williams continued on the screen.

Felicity spun around in her chair and muted the sound. “You’re not helping,” she said to Susan’s silent face.

Oliver came out of the back room, pulling on his suit jacket. “No,” he said grimly. “She isn’t.” He looked at the team. “I need to handle the press. Especially if Chase is missing. But I’ll be back as soon as I can.” He looked at Evelyn. “Don’t go anywhere.” He looked at the others. “Don’t let her leave, but don’t hurt her, either.” And then, he looked at Felicity. “If there’s anything you can find out about this...”

“I’m on it,” Felicity said.

***

The press was pretty hard on Oliver. The team watched on Felicity’s big computer screen as he dealt with question after question about the bombing, the possible involvement of the Huntress, the whereabouts of Adrian Chase, and the city’s grim history of attacks. There were only so many ways that Oliver could say “I don’t know” while trying to calm the city.

And then he had to have his talk with Evelyn. It was late when he had finished, and stopped by Felicity’s workstation.

“Hey,” she said. “How did it go with Evelyn?”

“All right, actually, I think,” Oliver replied. “She wants to apologize to everyone else tomorrow, too.”

“You should be there when she talks to Curtis,” Felicity suggested. “He seemed uncharacteristically bloodthirsty out there.”

“He did,” Oliver agreed. “He probably won’t be happy when he hears that I’m letting Evelyn back onto the team.”

“You are?” Felicity looked at him. “Oliver, how could this possibly be a good idea?”

“She asked me the same thing,” he said with a shrug. “I told her that I’ve come to believe in second chances. And that they aren’t necessarily earned, but what you do with them matters.”

Felicity nodded. “But how do you know she’ll do the right thing?”

“I don’t,” Oliver said. “We’ll have to keep an eye on her. But she gave me a lot of information about where she’s met with Prometheus. We haven’t even had an address before.”

“Oliver, don’t go looking for him,” Felicity said. She didn’t notice that she had put her hand on his. “It could be a trap.”

“I know,” he said. “But you could do some of your traffic camera magic to keep an eye on all those locations, right? While we try to figure out if there’s any connection to this bombing.”

“Right.” Felicity looked down at their hands in surprise, and let his hand go. “How do you think it went with the press?”

“It was rough,” Oliver confessed. “I don’t think I’ve felt so unprepared to face them in months.”

“The police didn’t brief you?” Felicity asked.

“They didn’t know anything,” Oliver said. “They got to the scene after the firefighters did – anyone involved in the bombing was gone.”

“Was anybody...” Felicity paused.

“They didn’t find any bodies,” Oliver said. “They think everyone in the building had gone home before the explosion happened.”

Felicity released a breath that she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “That’s good news, at least.”

“Yes,” Oliver agreed. “But I don’t know where the press got their information about Helena. And I don’t know why they kept asking about Chase – he’s been pretty active as a DA, but he doesn’t come to every emergency press conference.”

“Maybe Susan will tell you tonight,” Felicity said. Why was that so hard to say?

“I’m not going to see Susan tonight,” Oliver said. “We broke things off earlier today.”

“Oh,” said Felicity. She felt like she should say she was sorry, but she didn’t.

“We had a very civilized conversation about the role of the press in making government accountable,” Oliver said. “And we decided that a relationship wasn’t a good idea.”

“She didn’t sound that civilized tonight.” Felicity’s tone was a bit more icy than she had intended.

“She’s just doing her job,” Oliver said. “Her job involves being hard on me. It’s ok.”

Felicity took a deep breath and stepped back. When had she moved so close to Oliver? “I’ll start the surveillance on Prometheus’ hideout,” she said. “And put together everything that’s known about TechStar.” She looked up at him. “We’ll get ahead of Prometheus, Oliver. We won’t let him set us up again.”

She could feel his eyes on her back all the way to the elevator doors.

***

Helena and Nyssa were at HIVE when Felicity finally returned.

“Sorry I’m late,” Felicity said. “Oliver’s crew had a crisis, and that was BEFORE TechStar blew up. What happened in there?”

“There was a bomb,” Helena said. “It exploded.”

“I figured out that much,” Felicity said. “But what happened with the other vigilante?”

“He got in the way,” Helena said. She did not sound pleased. Hours of watching Susan Williams reporting that she was a suspected terrorist would do that, Felicity figured.

“But did he get out?” Felicity asked. “Oliver said that the police didn’t find any bodies.”

“I don’t know,” Helena said.

“He had not left when we escaped,” Nyssa added.

“I need to learn that silk scarf trick,” Helena said. “That was amazing.”

“Could we go back to the Vigilante?” Felicity said, walking to her computer. “Do you think he was caught in the explosion?”

“There might have been a way out after the wall blew off,” Helena said.

“It would have been difficult,” Nyssa said. “It was on the second floor.”

“But there wasn’t a body,” Felicity mused. “Maybe he escaped, but was injured.”

“He pissed me off, and I want to know what happened to him,” said Helena, “but aren’t you forgetting something?” She opened her hand to reveal the flash drive.

“You did get it! Nice work.” Felicity reached for the drive.

“What is this?” asked Nyssa, looking at the numbers and letters scrolling down the screen.

“It’s the internal log of their traffic. I was hoping there would also be something that tied particular people to the IP addresses that kept looking at Helena’s files, but this could also be useful. It will tell me if the traffic actually originated there, or if it was redirected from somewhere else.” 

“Redirected? How?” Helena asked.

“Someone could have infected the TechStar system with malware – like a virus – that would take commands from one source, and then pass them on in an untraceable way.” Felicity wasn’t sure if any of it would make sense.

“Oh. Like a fence,” Helena said.

“Or a courier,” Nyssa added.

Ok. Well, maybe it wasn’t that odd.

“It seems like we were deliberately lured there,” Felicity said. “Just like Jeremiah Stanton’s apartment.”

***

Adrian Chase didn’t show up for the closing arguments in John’s trial. Fortunately, his assistant was fine, at least according to Lyla. John was acquitted on all counts. Which meant that Felicity needed to clean up HIVE before he and Lyla arrived to collect his things and go home.

She didn’t quite succeed.

Moments after John and Lyla walked through the door, Felicity was enveloped in the warmest, safest bear hug she had ever felt. “Sorry I didn’t come to the trial,” Felicity said.

“Oliver said you helped track down those warheads,” John replied. “That evidence made all the difference.”

“Not Oliver’s testimony?” Felicity tried to tease.

“That helped, too,” Lyla said, coming out of one of the rooms. She was holding something. “Johnny, I assume this isn’t yours.” She held up a purple bra.

“Oh!” Felicity said, pulling out of John’s hug and snatching the bra from Lyla before she had a chance to inspect it too closely. “That’s mine. Sorry.”

“You’ve been living here?” John asked. He looked worried. “Felicity...”

“I’m fine,” she said, stuffing the bra into her messenger bag.

“Nobody who stays in this place is _fine_ , Felicity,” John said.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Felicity replied.

John and Lyla shared a look, but they let the matter drop.

“We won’t tell Oliver,” Lyla said as they left.

***

The next few days passed in a blur. Lyla asked Felicity for help figuring out who was responsible for setting John up to take the fall – ARGUS had some hints that the plot went deeper than a few corrupt officers. That was on top of investigating TechStar’s business activities for Oliver, and TechStar’s internal computer traffic from the data that Helena had swiped.

It didn’t help that the team kept coming over to her workstations to watch news reports. Felicity minimized the window that showed the TechStar logs as Evelyn walked by her chair for the gazillionth time in the past hour.

“If you keep doing that, we’re just going to assume you’re reading porn,” Evelyn commented on her way past.

“Felicity reads porn?” Curtis asked, looking over her shoulder.

“Would you all just stop it?” Felicity demanded. “This is my space. MINE.”

“Guys,” Rory said. “Look.”

Susan Williams was on the screen again, pointing to sketch of someone wearing a weird ski mask. “ _Sources say that the Huntress was not the only person in TechStar on the night of the explosion. This man, known only as Vigilante, was also seen in the building earlier that evening. His connection to the Huntress remains unknown._ ”

Rene shook his head. “How does she know this stuff? I thought Blondie said the cameras were all down that night.”

“They were,” Felicity said. “And, for the fourteen billionth time, that is NOT my name.”

Oliver walked in, followed by John. Felicity spun in her chair to face them. “Has Lyla been able to do anything with the information I sent her?” Felicity asked.

“Yes,” Oliver said. “I’m following up with some connections in Russia.”

“I’ve always wanted to go to Russia,” said Evelyn.

Everyone looked at her.

“What? The Nutcracker? Those little dolls?” She shrugged. “Fine.”

“Trust me,” Oliver said. “You don’t want to end up in Russia.”

“And that’s our cue to work out,” Curtis said.

“Please,” Felicity said.

“You all right?” John asked.

Felicity nodded. “I just need some air. It’s crowded in here.”

***

Back at HIVE, Felicity had a bit more luck searching through TechStar’s information. Whoever had been searching Helena’s parole information had also probed some internal files from TechStar. Inventories, mostly. Felicity started a new search to figure out what the various part numbers referred to.

Helena and Nyssa came in with something that smelled like Indian food.

“Nepalese,” Helena said. She came over to Felicity’s workstation and looked at the screen. “Found anything?”

“Our ‘friend’ – and I use that term loosely for a bunch of nameless malware – seems interested in spare parts.” Felicity frowned at the list of motherboards, switches, and wires.

“Our other ‘friend’ has been busy, too,” Helena said. “Check the news.”

Susan Williams was still reporting about the mysterious vigilante.

Felicity watched for a bit. “At least she’s not after you any more.”

“Or she’s after the Vigilante as well as me,” Helena said. “On the bright side, nobody’s heard from Adrian Chase recently. At least according to her.”

“Oliver said he was in a motorcycle accident,” Felicity said. “He’s been in the hospital. I don’t know why she couldn’t find that out, with all her ‘investigative journalism’ skills.”

“You dislike her,” Nyssa observed.

“She’s the worst thing in clickbait journalism, except she’s on tv rather than online,” Felicity said. “Which might make her even worse. This city has enough trouble without her stirring things up. Beyond the earthquakes and viruses, we’ve got a deputy mayor in rehab, a district attorney in the hospital, and a mayor who goes out fighting crime every night.”

“It’s interesting that Chase is into motorcycles,” Helena noted. “He and Oliver have a lot in common.”

Felicity froze for a moment and tried to replay the conversation in her head. Motorcycle accidents. Oliver.

She started tapping at the keyboard.

“Do you ever wonder what’s going on in her head when she does that?” Helena asked. “I know it will all come out at once. Probably soon. But still.”

Felicity spun in her chair to face them. She was glad that she had outfitted HIVE with spinning chairs. Workstations weren’t the same without them.

Helena and Nyssa looked from her to the screen. “Yes?” Helena asked.

“Adrian Chase’s emergency room report,” Felicity said.

“He broke both his legs,” Nyssa read.

“That was a bad motorcycle accident,” Helena said.

“As bad as a fall from a second story window,” Felicity said. “Or from a giant hole blown in a wall.”

“You think he could be the Vigilante?” Helena asked. “That’s... interesting.”

“It is,” Felicity said, and took a bite of her stew.

***

“You know, I could do the research into TechStar’s business activity,” Curtis offered a couple days later.

Felicity glared at him and shoved her hair back into her ponytail. “Yes?” she asked. Dangerously.

“Not that you aren’t doing a great job. You are. You clearly are. It’s just... I already did some research into them when I was working on my cover letter...” Curtis held it out, hesitantly.

Felicity snatched it from his hands and skimmed through it. “This doesn’t look very different from Unidac,” she said.

“I know,” Curtis agreed. “Which is why I thought of applying there. Unidac was always on the forefront of new technology, you know? That’s why I went to work for the Applied Sciences division of Palmer Tech in the first place.”

“Wait,” Felicity said. “Go back.”

“That’s why I thought of applying there?” Curtis looked confused.

“No,” Felicity said. “Unidac’s new technologies.” She handed him a pad of paper. “Curtis, could you make a list of all of the inventions that were patented by Unidac?” She stood and headed for the elevator.

“Where are you going?” Curtis asked.

“Errands,” Felicity said. “I just remembered. We’re out of... staples. And pens.”

She left Curtis frowning at the five red pens sitting in the container on her desk.

***

“An earthquake machine,” Felicity said as she burst through the door into HIVE. “That’s what Prometheus wants to build. An earthquake machine.”

“The device that Malcolm Merlyn used?” Nyssa asked, looking up from sharpening her knives.

“Exactly,” Felicity said.

“Not very creative,” said Helena.

“No,” Felicity said. “It’s like the bad guys have all gone into syndication or something. But that’s good news. Because last time, we didn’t know what was going on until the machines were in place and activated. But now, we can take care of them before they’re even built.”

“What’s the plan?” asked Helena.

“I could turn it all over to ARGUS,” Felicity said. “Except Lyla’s out of the country right now. The police aren’t a good option, either.” She smiled. “I guess we’ll just have to blow it up.”

“I thought you were into disabling bombs,” Helena commented.

“I blew up part of Oliver’s company once, too,” Felicity said. “This is like old times.”

Susan Williams’ voice came from the workstation. “ _Attorney General Adrian Chase returned to work today – on crutches. More about his mysterious motorcycle accident later._ ”

“You’re slow, slow, slow, you evil muckraker,” Felicity called at the computer as she headed for the storage areas.

“I believe the C-4 is stored on the other floor,” Nyssa said. “What?” she asked at the odd looks from Helena and Felicity. “The League may have had an antiquated social structure, but we always tried to learn about modern methods of destruction.”

Felicity was working through a checklist for wiring the bomb when Susan’s voice came from the computer again.

“She’s interviewing the DA,” Helena said. “He’s not bad looking, in a bitter-enemies kind of way.”

“I could say the same for Susan Williams,” Nyssa said. “But I prefer blondes.”

Felicity just shook her head. “What’s Susan saying?”

“She asked about the motorcycle accident,” Helena said.

“Shh!” ordered Nyssa.

“ _Have you ever seen this man?_ ” Susan was asking, holding up the sketch of the Vigilante.

“ _No,_ ” Chase said.

“He’s even worse at lying than Oliver,” Felicity noted. “He’d never win a hand of poker in Vegas with that eye twitch.”

“ _...because witnesses placed him at the scene of the TechStar explosion last week,_ ” Susan continued.

“ _As I said,_ ” Chase replied, “ _I was in the hospital after my motorcycle accident at the time._ ”

“ _Really._ ” Susan glanced at the camera.

“Her smile is really evil,” Felicity said. “Don’t you think?”

“Shhh!” Helena and Nyssa whispered.

“ _...after a two-story fall like that, his legs are probably broken,_ ” Susan was saying.

“ _What are you trying to say?_ ” asked Chase.

“ _Mr. District Attorney,_ ” Susan said, “ _have you ever wanted to take the law into your own hands?_ ”

“ _I swore an oath to uphold the law,_ ” Chase said.

“ _Even after your family was killed by the Russian mob, Mr. Chase?_ ” Susan looked like a cat that had just cleaned out an entire dairy.

“Did we know that?” Helena was asking.

Felicity was already typing. “On it,” she said. “And no, we didn’t. But we should have.” She frowned at the screen. “Where does Susan get her information, anyway?” She typed several lines. “We’ll see where you’re getting all this,” she said. “We will see.”

The interview came to its uncomfortable end, and Felicity went back to work building her bomb. The wires were soothing. Quiet. No judgment. Even the ghosts in the shadows were silent for once. Maybe being a mad bomber was her true calling, Felicity mused. Except for the ski mask. She would probably have to wear a stupid ski mask.

“Felicity,” Helena called from the lower level. “You should come see this.”

It was a different reporter. Not Susan Williams this time. But it was the words scrolling across the bottom of the screen that rocked her.

 _District Attorney Adrian Chase found dead in his home_ , they said, _of an apparent suicide_.

***

Felicity walked into the bunker to see Curtis and Evelyn huddled around the computer. “Where’s everyone else?” she asked.

“John’s home with his son and Lyla's parents,” Curtis said. “He said he needed to hug them all.”

“Rory and Rene went out for a drink,” Evelyn said. “They said I was too young to come with them.”

“Oliver?” Felicity said.

“City Hall, I think,” Curtis said. “He got a text and left.”

“He hasn’t been on the news, though,” Evelyn said. “That’s weird, isn’t it?”

“It is weird,” Felicity agreed, sitting down at her computer and starting up the GPS tracking software. “Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately for any bad guys who want to kidnap the mayor, there are tracking devices in all of Oliver’s shoes.”

A green dot appeared on the map on the screen, beside an address. It was in a residential neighborhood, not City Hall. Felicity typed a few commands to find out more about the place.

It belonged to Susan Williams.

“That’s what you get for stalking him like that,” said Curtis, as Felicity stormed out of the bunker.

Evelyn appeared to be punching him in the arm as the elevator doors closed.

***

“It’s time to set the bomb,” Felicity said as she walked into HIVE.

“Tonight?” asked Nyssa.

“You don’t have to work tonight, do you?” Felicity asked. “The bomb is ready. We know where the parts are. If we wait, Prometheus might move the parts, or set up a trap.”

“How do you know there isn’t a trap there already?” Helena asked.

“Because Susan Williams is busy,” Felicity said.

“What is Susan Williams’ connection to Prometheus?” Nyssa asked.

Felicity started ticking points off on her fingers. “First, she had information about BOTH Helena and Chase at the TechStar bombing, before anyone else – even the police, even Oliver – knew. Second, I've hacked her phone, and she’s been getting messages all day from a number that even I am having trouble tracing. And third,” Felicity tapped a few keys and brought up the GPS tracker. “Third, she is currently seducing Oliver.”

“I don’t see how the third point relates to Prometheus,” Helena said. “Oliver’s a big boy. He can handle being seduced. Especially if he’s been celibate for a year.”

Felicity glared at her.

“What? You know what he’s like in bed. I can’t imagine him going that long without sex.” Helena shrugged.

“Also, Prometheus does not move like a woman,” added Nyssa.

“Fine,” Felicity said. “But she’s clearly working with Prometheus. Right?”

Helena and Nyssa shrugged.

“So that’s set,” Felicity said. “I’m going to go change.”

***

They separated the parts of the bomb until they got to the warehouse that contained all the necessary equipment to build an earthquake machine. Nyssa and Helena each carried half the C-4. Felicity had the timer, the trigger, and the wires. They borrowed a car from across the street – Felicity hot-wired it – because Felicity’s mini would be too recognizable, and Felicity didn’t want anything to do with a motorcycle.

“Even if Oliver was on it with you?” Helena smirked.

“Even then,” insisted Felicity. “I mean, past tense. Because Oliver and motorcycles are clearly not in my future.”

Nyssa shrugged. “There is not much that compares with riding a motorcycle with your beloved,” she said.

“He’s sleeping with Susan Williams,” Felicity said. “He is NOT my beloved.”

When they arrived at the warehouse, Felicity pulled up the building plans on her tablet. “We should confirm the location of all the parts for making the earthquake device,” she said. “I want to make sure that every one of them goes BOOM. Prometheus won’t have anything to work with but melted plastic and some twisted wires.” She smiled grimly. “Maybe he could take up sculpture. I bet Rory could make something amazing out of that stuff.”

“We should move,” Nyssa said. “There is a security guard coming.”

Nyssa took the west side. Helena stayed on the east side, near the entrance. Felicity checked the south end. Before splitting up, Felicity checked the comms to make sure they were working.

The ski mask itched. Stupid mask.

“Quiet comms,” said Helena.

Felicity ground her teeth together and began looking through the towering stacks of boxes for specific item codes.

“I have the motherboards,” Nyssa said. “I have set the explosives.”

“I don’t know what this is,” Helena said, “But it matches your numbers. Explosives set.” 

Felicity found some parts of the timing device and set her explosives.

That left the stuff that created the actual shaking. None of them could find it.

“East side clear,” said Helena. “I’m starting on the north end.”

“The west side is also clear,” said Nyssa. “I will begin searching the north end, as well.”

Felicity finished searching her section when she heard a voice. An unfortunately familiar voice.

“Helena Bertinelli,” said Oliver through his voice modulator, “put the explosives down!”

“Or what,” Helena drawled. “You’ll finally put an arrow in me? What, couldn’t stay through the whole night with your new lover?”

“I hate that word,” Felicity said through the comms. “I hate it even more now.”

“Put. The. Bomb. Down.” Oliver’s modulator voice sounded even more Arrow-like than usual.

“He’d not kidding,” called Rene from somewhere in the shadows.

“We’ve got you covered,” said Evelyn.

“Don’t do it,” whispered Rory. “Please.”

Felicity heard Helena drop her crossbow, and started to creep through the shadows towards her.

Nyssa reached her first. “She is not alone,” she said.

“Nyssa.” Oliver’s voice modulator made it hard to tell if it was a question or not. “What are you doing?”

“Helping a friend,” Nyssa said.

“Nyssa. Don’t do this,” Oliver said. “Why are you trying to blow up buildings in my city?”

Felicity finally reached their end of the building. “Because they’re helping me,” she said, pulling off her ski mask. Frakking mask.

“Felicity?” Oliver said. He reached up and turned the voice modulator off. “Felicity. You’re working with Helena?”

“And with Nyssa,” she said. “Though I guess you don’t find that so surprising.”

“I don’t know if I should be insulted by that,” said Helena. “After all, Nyssa was actually married to Oliver. I only slept with him. Speaking of which, didn’t you say he was... occupied?”

“I did.” Felicity glared at Oliver. “What are you doing here?”

“What am I...” Oliver stopped, flustered. “Felicity. Curtis was watching the traffic cameras around the TechStar warehouses using your program. He saw something weird and called me in.” He stopped and looked at the things in Felicity’s arms. “Is that C-4?”

“He’s good,” Helena said. “Got to give him that.”

“Felicity,” Oliver said. “Are you trying to blow up this building?”

“Well,” Felicity said. “Only the parts with the materials to make an earthquake machine.” She took a step forward. “An earthquake machine, Oliver. Like in the Undertaking.”

“Felicity.” Oliver stepped forward. “How do you know that someone was going to build an earthquake machine?”

“The IP addresses from the logs in the server room at TechStar implied that they had been compromised by malware that shared their entire inventory list with...” She looked at Oliver. He was doing that little crinkly-faced head-shake thing. “Never mind. I did tech magic. It told me.”

Oliver frowned. “Felicity, how do you know this isn’t an elaborate trick by Prometheus to get you to blow something up?” He looked from her to Helena. “Wait. Felicity, that was your work in TechStar?”

“Not the explosion,” she said. “We were just stealing data. You know, the usual. Flash drive, data, done. Except with a big, unexpected BOOM.”

“Was Adrian Chase really there?” Oliver asked.

“A weird guy in a ski mask was,” Helena said. “If that was Adrian Chase, then yes.”

“The suicide kind of suggests that was true,” Felicity said.

Oliver nodded. “But why was Adrian Chase there?”

“Because he was after the Huntress?” Felicity said. “Oh.”

“Exactly,” Oliver said. “Felicity, I think Prometheus is manipulating you.”

“Says the guy who just slept with the hot reporter,” Felicity said.

Oliver didn’t say anything.

“Felicity,” Nyssa interrupted, “what should we do with all this C-4?”

“Please don’t blow up anything else in my city,” Oliver begged. “Felicity. Please.”

She looked at him, then at the others.

Rory whispered, “You don’t want this for your legacy.”

Felicity sighed and let her shoulders slump. “Fine. I’ll tell you all where to find the C-4, and we’ll get it out of here.”

***

Oliver was still in his leathers when Felicity got back to the bunker, after returning the hot-wired car with a full tank of gas.

Felicity took a breath. “Oliver. I’m sorry that I tried to blow up part of your city.”

Oliver leaned back against the table and frowned.

“That’s not all you want to talk about.” Felicity knew better than to phrase it as a question.

Oliver shook his head. He opened his mouth, then closed it, then took a breath. Finally, he said, “How long has this been going on?”

Felicity just looked at him as innocently as possible.

Oliver sighed. “You faked Helena’s parole, didn’t you.”

Felicity nodded. “I also broke her out of Iron Heights. It turns out it’s really easy. Which we already knew.”

Oliver didn’t crack a smile. That’s when Felicity knew things were really bad.

“Helena didn’t do all those things that she’s been accused of,” Felicity insisted. “We were just following leads on Prometheus. That guy she killed – she didn’t mean to do that.”

“Fine. I get that. It’s not Helena that I’m upset about,” Oliver said, frowning. “It’s just... why?”

“Prometheus was...” She looked at Oliver.

He looked back.

She took another breath. “I knew where he was, Oliver. But all you wanted to do was go after that fake Laurel.”

Oliver frowned. “But it wasn’t actually Prometheus, was it? The address you went after.” 

“No,” Felicity said. “But there were other clues.”

“And they led to, what? Buildings being blown up?” Oliver rubbed his hands through his hair. “I don’t get it, Felicity. You’re smarter than that.”

That hurt. “You were BUSY, Oliver. With the city. Meeting with Adrian Chase. Helping John.” Felicity paused. “With Susan.”

Oliver flinched. “That has nothing to do with this.”

Felicity turned on him. “How do you know? Oliver, she was after Helena when nobody else had information.”

“So was Adrian Chase,” Oliver argued.

“And where did he get that information?” Felicity demanded. “I’ll search his phone records, Oliver, but I can already tell you what I’ll find.” She stalked to the computer and started typing. “It’s going to be tips from some anonymous number, something that even I can’t trace.” She hit the enter key a bit harder than it deserved. “There. The search is running.”

“Good,” said Oliver.

“It won’t finish until tomorrow,” Felicity said. “I’m going to go get some sleep.”

She stalked out of the bunker, knowing full well that the ghosts in HIVE wouldn’t let her close her eyes.

***

As soon as she got back to HIVE, she started a more extensive search of Susan Williams’ phone records, e-mail contacts, financial transactions, Twitter account – anything that could provide a clue to her sources. That was the best way to get to Prometheus. Felicity was sure of it.

The night passed slowly, even though it was already half over when she put on her pajamas. Felicity sat on the cot with the afghan wrapped around herself, willing the ghosts away. They laughed at her.

In the morning, the searches had completed. Which meant there was a lot of data to sort through. Felicity set up another algorithm to search for patterns in the metadata, in the words used, in anything.

And then she went to make coffee. After she started the algorithm running. If that didn’t say how serious she was about getting to the bottom of this Susan Williams business, nothing would.

Felicity sipped her coffee while waiting for the program to run. The coffee ran out first, so she put down her afghan and went to take a shower. When she came out, there were results.

The metadata still didn’t reveal anything about the IP addresses. But the text searches did find patterns. Some of the most common strings: Helena Bertinelli. Adrian Chase.

Oliver Queen. Russia.

Felicity began typing furiously. The references to Oliver went back into the fall, before Susan had even started her flirting campaign.

And there were financial transactions – small amounts of money transferred, hardly noticeable otherwise – corresponding to each date and time that Oliver’s name appeared, up until her first text message from Oliver himself.

Felicity scowled and filtered out the direct communications. She did NOT need to see what Oliver was saying to that woman.

And then the correlation became even clearer.

Susan Williams was investigating Oliver.

And she was paying someone - someone shady, given how the account information was obscured - for the information. 

***

Felicity had already gathered all of her tools by the time Helena and Nyssa arrived. Information loaded onto the tablet. Duct tape. Tranquilizer flechettes. Ski mask.

“What’s all this?” Helena asked when she walked into the room.

Felicity laid out the evidence. The text search results. The payments. The still-mysterious source.

“We’re going to take Susan Williams down,” Felicity said.

“Sounds like a personal vendetta,” Helena said, and then smiled. “I love a good vendetta. Count me in.”

“I will not join you,” Nyssa said. The other women stared at her. “I may be fond of true love, but I will not attack another woman in a fight over a man. Sara and I often talked about this, about what we would do in a perfect world. This is not something I choose to do.”

Felicity shrugged. “Fine,” she said. “Helena and I can do this. Right?”

Helena was already collecting her crossbow bolts. “Right.”

***

Kidnapping Susan Williams from her apartment was easy. Getting her to provide any useful information? That was hard.

“ _You know more about Prometheus than I do_ ,” Susan said. “ _I don’t reveal my sources_ ,” Susan bragged. Felicity hated her.

Plus the ski mask itched. Maybe she had an allergy to masks, Felicity thought.

Then Helena had to refer to Susan as Oliver's girlfriend. And Felicity could barely see the tablet through the ski mask. She swore and tore it off.

“The last thing he needs is your sensationalistic, blood-thirsty reporting, after everything he’s gone through,” Felicity spat out.

“I wouldn’t do that...” Susan protested.

 _Yeah, right_ , Felicity thought.

“Tell that to Adrian Chase,” Helena said. “Oh, that’s right, you can’t. Because he’s _dead_.”

That comment seemed to hit Susan surprisingly hard, under the circumstances. “I would never do that to Oliver.”

Felicity stared at her. “Why not? He’s the perfect target for your kind of exposé.”

“Because...” Susan paused. She actually looked uncomfortable. Good. But then she said, “I know what he’s doing for this city. I know that, despite everything I’ve uncovered, he’s a good man.”

And Felicity found herself nodding along.

 _What I am I doing?_ Felicity thought as she forced herself to stop. “Fine,” she said.

Susan did promise to tell Oliver everything, Felicity told herself as they returned Susan’s unconscious body to her apartment. That counted for something. Right?

“I think she’s fallen for Oliver,” Helena commented on the way back to HIVE.

Felicity gritted her teeth and tried to ignore the sick feeling in her stomach.

***

Oliver wasn’t at the bunker when Felicity arrived.

“He got a call and had to leave,” Rene said.

John just looked at Felicity sadly. Oh. So he went to see Susan.

Felicity’s heart sunk into her heels as she sat at her computer. There had to be another way to figure out who had been contacting Adrian Chase, and Susan Williams, and had infected TechStar with malware. She tried another type of network forensics and leaned back, rubbing her temples to push away the growing headache.

An hour and a half later, Oliver stalked into the bunker. The recruits took a step back (or several, in the case of Curtis).

John took one look at Oliver, then at Felicity, then back at Oliver. “I think they need the room.” 

Oliver just nodded. Once. Without taking his eyes off Felicity.

The recruits fled. John looked back before he reached the elevator. “I would wish you good luck, but I’m not sure who needs it more.”

Felicity rose to her feet as Oliver approached. He walked around her once, then stopped and looked down at her.

“You kidnapped Susan,” he said. “You and Helena.”

“I did,” Felicity replied, not giving an inch of ground even though he loomed over her.

“You told me that you and Helena had just been following leads on Prometheus,” Oliver growled. “You convinced me that Helena shot that Triad agent in self-defense.”

“She did,” Felicity said. She took a step forward. “Did Susan tell you why we kidnapped her?” Oliver retreated a step, so Felicity continued her advance. “Did she tell you that she had been investigating you? For MONTHS? That she had been paying someone – someone even _I_ can’t trace – for information?”

“Yes,” said Oliver, holding his ground. “And she told me what she had found out. Everything.”

“And did she tell you what she planned to do with it?” Felicity demanded.

“Nothing,” Oliver said. “She had decided keep it secret.”

Felicity snorted. “Just like she kept Adrian Chase’s identity secret.”

“That’s unfair,” Oliver said. “She never intended for Adrian to kill himself.”

“How do you even know that?” Felicity asked. “What, you think that because you slept with her that she changed?”

“Felicity,” Oliver said.

“How do you know she didn’t lure you into her bed, with a sob story and fake remorse?” Felicity glared at him. “You don’t exactly have the best track record with manipulative women, Oliver.” She started counting on her fingers. “I’ll give Helena a pass now. But Isabel?”

“Susan is NOT Isabel,” Oliver glared back.

“Brunette. Leggy. Hot. Overly fascinated with Russia. I’m not seeing the difference, Oliver.”

“The difference is...” Oliver turned and scratched his hands through his hair. “You don’t care, do you.” He looked back at her. “It’s the hot, leggy brunette thing.”

“What if it is?” Felicity said, stepping back.

“Well, for one thing, you ran Isabel over with a van.”

“She was trying to kill us,” Felicity protested.

“And I would appreciate it if you would remember that before you take the van after Susan,” Oliver said. “Just because you think she slept with me.”

“I am not going to run Susan over with the van,” Felicity said. “Unless she outs you on tv. I won’t make any promises in that case.”

“She’s not going to out me on tv,” Oliver said.

“I asked this already, but how do you know that, Oliver? You’ve been hunted by multiple ex-girlfriends, by the SCPD, by Quentin Lance, by the League of Assassins. The last time you were outed? Roy Harper had to fake his death and leave town to clear your name. And you STILL had to go to Nanda Parbat and become heir to the league of totally evil people.” She was standing closer to him than she intended, so she turned away and took a step back. “I just don’t understand why you would get involved with people you can’t trust.”

“Maybe because the person I trust doesn’t want to be with me!” 

Felicity froze.

Oliver touched her elbow, then pulled back and walked around to face her. “Felicity. I know that what happened last year was my fault. But you walked away. You gave back the ring and told me to keep it. You told me you weren’t keeping the door open for us. You wanted me to embrace what was next.”

“Oliver.” Felicity swallowed. “I want you to be happy. As Oliver Queen. I just don’t want you to be...” She paused. “Dead.”

Oliver looked at her, in that way he had. “I’ll do my best.” He turned and walked towards the elevator.

Felicity watched him go. Her mouth tasted like salt.

Huh. She wondered how long she had been crying.


	5. Ruined?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Climaxes. Of various sorts. Susan is not involved in any of them, to Felicity's great relief.

Felicity’s newest search algorithm finished running. It didn’t give her a name. Not exactly. But it did give her a location.

She went back to HIVE to talk to Helena and Nyssa. They looked skeptical, but gathered their things anyway.

***

The headquarters for Merlyn Global had been left empty for several years. First the CEO had disappeared under suspicion of creating an earthquake that killed hundreds of people. Then the glass in the atrium had been smashed by Mirakuru-crazed soldiers. Even the worst corporate predators wouldn’t touch the company after the virus scare, and half of the street access had been destroyed by the collapse of the city’s sewers. It was an empty shell trying to look like a high rise. But somehow, it still had electricity and internet access.

Fortunately, the parts of the building with internet access weren’t on the top floor. Felicity adored Helena and Nyssa, but she wasn’t about to go climbing an elevator shaft with them, no matter how badass they were. The server room was in the back of the ground floor, behind the space that used to house the security guards. Helena and Nyssa watched the entry, while Felicity walked down one aisle of abandoned computer hardware after another, searching for the source of the glowing lights.

A shadow stepped between Felicity and the lights.

A shadow carrying a bow.

Felicity pulled off her mask and sighed. “Oliver. What are you doing here?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” Oliver replied.

“I finally found a location for all that untraceable internet traffic,” Felicity said. “How did you end up here?”

“Helena texted me,” Oliver said. “She was worried that you were heading into another trap.”

“And it’s ok for you to walk into a trap?” Felicity demanded.

“I brought back-up,” Oliver said.

“So did I,” Felicity responded. “Didn’t you see them?”

“I came in the back,” Oliver said. “Tommy and I used to play hide-and-seek in here when we were little.” He stopped and held up his hand to keep Felicity from responding. “Did you hear that?”

Felicity listened. There was no sound but the humming of a computer somewhere. Except... wait. There was something that sounded, maybe, like a cough.

Oliver pointed silently toward the next aisle and led the way. How did he move so quietly? Felicity had to think hard about her breathing if she had any chance of sneaking up on someone. And her footsteps were about as quiet as a baby elephant’s. Maybe Nyssa could teach her some ninja skills.

They rounded the corner and saw an emaciated, grey-haired man sitting with one hand chained to a keyboard.

Felicity took a step towards him. “Dad?”

He turned towards them and gave an attempt at his wry half-smile. “Hi, sweetie. I should have known you would figure this out eventually.” His face was covered by a scraggly beard, as if he hadn’t been able to shave for at least a month.

“How long have you been here?” Felicity asked. “How did Prometheus get to you? Was that you with the malware? And the information about the Huntress? And...”

“Get down!” called Oliver.

Felicity dove for the floor. The metal blade barely missed her head.

She looked up, first towards the dark, hooded figure emerging from the shadows, then at Oliver, who was spinning towards him, moving between Prometheus and her father. She saw the flash of another blade, and another. Oliver’s bow was a blur, knocking the throwing stars off course. The blades came too close to Oliver for Felicity’s comfort, so she ripped a keyboard off of its connecting cable and threw it at Prometheus. He seemed distracted for a moment, before throwing two more blades in rapid succession.

A crossbow bolt clipped Prometheus’ hood from behind, and he spun to face Helena. Gunfire came from another direction, and one of Evelyn’s arrows caught the edge of his sleeve. He reached for something, and Felicity ducked in case another throwing star came her way. But there was a flash of light and a cloud of smoke instead, and when Felicity looked up, Prometheus was gone.

She looked around. Oliver was holding his hand against his shoulder. There was blood between his fingers. John rushed towards him, covering the wound before Felicity could take more than a few steps. 

“I’m ok,” Oliver said. “Felicity, your dad...”

Felicity’s dad was unconscious, bleeding from his neck. John nodded towards him, tossing her something. A cloth. He wanted her to slow the bleeding. Felicity grabbed it and held it to her father’s neck, glancing back and forth from him to Oliver.

Oliver shook his head at her. “I’m....” And slumped to the floor.

“Poison,” said Nyssa.

John dug through the various pockets on Oliver’s suit. “He’s started carrying some of those island herbs.” John pulled out a packet, poured some into Oliver’s mouth, and tossed the remainder to Felicity. “Something about Prometheus reminded him of his time away. He thought there might be poison at some point.”

Felicity crumbled the herbs in her hand and sprinkled them into her father’s mouth.

“We’ll get Oliver back to the bunker,” John said. “Felicity, you’re in the closest thing to street clothes here. You should get your father to the hospital. Evelyn, could you hold the cloth while Felicity calls an ambulance?”

Evelyn was already there, sliding her hand below Felicity’s. “It’s ok,” Evelyn said. “I’ve got him.”

Felicity’s hands shook as she dialed 911, but she managed to keep her voice mostly steady as she answered the questions. When she hung up, Evelyn guided her hand back to her father’s neck.

And then suddenly, the others were gone, and the paramedics were there with stretchers. And then she was in the hospital, watching her father get wheeled away to be stitched up. And then the police were asking her questions. She tried to remember what details she gave them, but he was a wanted criminal with an injury from a poisoned throwing star and clearly hadn’t washed or shaved in weeks. Oh, and he had been chained to a keyboard. There wasn’t a cover story crazy enough for that. Maybe the safest thing was “the Throwing Star Killer was forcing him to do computer work,” and leave it at that.

Besides, it was hard to concentrate on a decent cover story when she didn’t know how Oliver was doing.

Finally, she texted John to let him know that she needed a ride back to the bunker. Thankfully, they sent Rory, and not Curtis or Rene. Felicity didn’t think she could deal with either of them at the moment. Rory didn’t say a word – just handed her a blanket and drove her back to the bunker.

***

Felicity rushed across the bunker to the med table. Oliver was lying there, leather pants still on, blanket half-covering him. She froze for a moment, then let out her own breath as she saw his chest rise and fall.

John stood from the chair where he’d been sitting. “He’s ok, Felicity. He’s just sleeping it off.”

“On the med table?” she asked.

“He looked comfortable there,” Helena said from the other side of the table. “We didn’t want to move him.”

“But now that you’re here, we’ll give you some space,” John said, giving a significant look to Helena. She smiled, like something was secretly amusing, and led the way to a different part of the bunker.

Felicity sat in the chair that John had vacated.

She must have fallen asleep, because the next thing she heard was Oliver’s soft voice.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey, yourself,” Felicity responded. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

“I didn’t die. Again.” He smiled sleepily. “Told you I’d do my best.”

“Do better next time, mister,” she said, standing and walking to the side of the med table and pulling his blanket up towards his neck.

He held her eyes with a smile for a moment, then took a deep breath and pulled himself to sitting. “Helena told me about what you’ve been up to.”

“Oh. Like following false leads planted by my father?” Felicity asked sharply. “Nearly starting another mob war? Planting bombs?” Her shoulders sagged. “You were right. I should be smarter than that.”

“Felicity.” Oliver gave her one of those looks that she could feel. It went deeper than her heart. Maybe to her pancreas, or her liver. “I didn’t sleep with Susan. Helena said I should tell you that.”

Wait. What?

“I almost did,” he confessed, looking away for a moment. “The call from Curtis about your break-in at the TechStar warehouse interrupted us. But I didn’t.”

That wasn’t particularly encouraging.

“Later, Susan pointed something out to me.”

Felicity cringed. She just didn’t want to hear it. John had some earplugs for his target practice. Maybe if she moved fast enough, she could put them in...

“After you kidnapped her, she told me about everything she had learned about me. And then she told me something else.” Oliver took a breath, like he was scared to finish. “She said that she figured out why I was hesitating... because I’m still in love with you.”

They stared at each other for a moment. Then Felicity took a step back.

Oliver’s shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry. That was out of line. I know what you said last year...”

Felicity shook her head. “No. It’s just... I’m not that person any more.”

Oliver frowned, like he didn’t understand.

“I’m not the person you fell in love with. The ‘ _one who brings the light_.’ ‘ _The one who lights my way_.’ She doesn’t exist any more.” She looked away, so she wouldn’t have to see his reaction. “Helena went back to prison – voluntarily – because she had killed five people. John joined the army because he killed his brother. You’ve been blaming yourself for years for the people you killed – I don’t know how many, but it’s got to be less than a hundred.” She looked into the shadows, where the ghosts were watching. “I killed tens of thousands of people, Oliver. That’s more than Prometheus, Slade Wilson, and Malcolm Merlyn put together.” She sighed. “You need someone to be your light. But not me.”

She stood, not looking at him, and left the bunker.

***

HIVE was cold.

Felicity sat on her bed in the dark, even though it was daylight outside. She left the green afghan crumpled at the other end, and stared into the shadows. Her glasses were off, but the ghosts remained as clear as ever.

She didn’t hear the footsteps until they reached her doorway.

Oliver looked in, hesitantly, and tried to knock on the concrete wall. It didn’t make much sound.

“Hey,” he said. “Helena said you might have come here. And then John told me you were sleeping here.” He paused and leaned his head further through the doorway. “Would you mind... could I come in?”

Felicity nodded and looked away from him. She felt the flimsy bed shift as he sat at the end, and looked up to see him holding the afghan.

“Is it ok if I sit here?” He looked around at the room, bare except for piles of dirty clothing on the floor. “There isn’t really any other place.”

She nodded again.

“Helena said that you didn’t actually see any of the information that Susan found out,” he started. “So I thought...” He stopped and took a breath. “I’d like to tell you what I did, in those five years that I was gone.”

That got Felicity’s attention. She looked up, still silent.

So Oliver began to speak. About Yao Fei and Shado and Slade. About Akio and Maseo. About the first person he saw die, and the first person he killed, and the first person he tortured. About arrows and guns and broken necks. About being broken enough himself to join the Bratva, and then to ask Nyssa’s half sister to turn him the rest of the way into a weapon. About coming home, more of a vessel for some kind of poorly defined duty than a man.

He sat, silent, for a moment when he was done. Felicity looked at their hands. Somewhere along the line, she had slid closer to him and rested her hand on his, her finger rubbing against his thumb. She didn’t take her hand away.

“So...” she swallowed hard and tried again. “After all that... how did you end up a hero?”

He shook his head a little and shrugged. “I had friends who helped me see other ways forward. John.” He paused and looked at her. “You.”

Felicity shook her head. “Even when we first met... with your absurd cover stories... there was still something about you.” She tilted her head to look up at him. “You cared. Not just about your sister and your mother, but about making a difference for other people.”

“Maybe,” he said. “But it wouldn’t have lasted long if I hadn’t had friends who believed in me. There were times...” He shook his head.

Felicity just sat there, running her finger along his.

“Everything _you’ve_ been doing has been to protect people,” Oliver said. “You know that, don’t you?”

“I don't know about that. I wanted revenge on Prometheus,” Felicity confessed. “And I just didn’t like Susan very much.”

“Helena had a different explanation,” Oliver said. “But that’s the past. That’s not what matters. The future is.”

“That sounds like advice that you would give to Barry,” Felicity said.

“Maybe so,” Oliver conceded. “Or maybe it’s just what I’ve learned. With the help of friends.” He looked at her hand on his, then back up at her. “Maybe you could use a friend, too.”

“Besides Helena?” Felicity tried to joke.

“I thought that trusting Helena was one of my bad decisions?” Oliver teased back.

“I didn’t sleep with her,” Felicity protested.

“No?” Oliver asked. His face was getting closer to hers.

“I mean, maybe I should have. I haven’t been sleeping very well.” Felicity leaned a little closer.

“Friends who help you sleep better are good things.” Oliver was almost too close for her to see his eyes. Which was good, because she had always felt like she could fall into his eyes and drown.

But she didn’t say that. Instead, she closed the distance between their lips.

Kissing Oliver again was like... drinking a cool glass of water after a hot day in Bali. Like coming home after being gone for too long. Like waking up after being asleep.

There wasn’t nearly enough contact kissing him from the side like this, so Felicity turned towards him, trying to lean into his chest. That didn’t work, either, so she threw one leg over his, pushed the afghan out of the way, and climbed onto his lap. One of his hands ran up and down her back. Had those nerves ever felt quite so alive? She couldn’t remember. But she did remember the way his other hand alternated pulling her closer and caressing her ass. She wriggled against him until she felt that ridge pressing against her, just _there_.

Felicity moaned.

Oliver chuckled.

She pulled back a bit to see the look on his face. “I was just remembering how you used to help me get to sleep,” he said.

“Yes,” Felicity said. “That’s what I need right now.”

Oliver moaned at that, and pressed up against her. That was more like it.

She reached a hand around his back to tug on the bottom of his henley. He pulled away for a moment to allow her to lift it up and over his head, then leaned in to nip at her bottom lip as he slid a hand beneath her shirt. She wriggled against it until his hand found her bra, then slipped inside it to circle around her nipple. She gasped, and he ran his finger across it, then rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger in that especially hot imitation of his nervous tic. He laughed and pulled her shirt off one-handed, then leaned forward to lick at her nipple through her bra.

Felicity shouted something as she came.

Oliver laughed and stroked her back.

Felicity leaned her head into his chest, breathing hard. Then she looked up, bit her lip, and said, “More?”

Oliver nuzzled her hair, then started loosening her pants. “My pleasure.” He rubbed against her as if to demonstrate just how much pleasure that would be, then lifted her and flipped them both over.

The bed shook precariously.

Felicity undid Oliver’s jeans. It was a bit awkward, what with Oliver trying to remove her bra at the same time, but finally they were both entirely naked.

Felicity reached up and ran her fingers, gently, along Oliver’s scars, one by one. He remained still, supporting himself above her with his arms, until she was done. Then he leaned forward and kissed her, one spot at a time, from her temple to her neck and then down her body to her hips. She shuddered as he licked her, then pulled him up and into her.

They came just before the bed collapsed.

“Are you ok?” Oliver asked. “Felicity, your back...”

Felicity couldn’t stop laughing. “Fine. I’m fine. I’m... more than fine.” She rested her head back and looked up at him. Frak, she could get lost in those eyes. “Though sleeping might get more complicated. I mean, yes, there are more beds in here, we were ready to hide out forever if necessary. We probably have enough breakfast cereal and coffee for a month. But the beds are pretty small.”

Eventually they grabbed one of the workout mats and made a little nest of blankets and pillows and Felicity’s afghan. Felicity curled up in a ball against Oliver’s side, her cold feet stuck between his warm legs, and sighed.

Oliver buried his face in her hair. “Felicity,” he whispered, “I want to get to know the new you. Whoever she is.”

She smiled lazily. “Even if I kind of like making bombs?”

“You’re not a villain, Felicity,” he murmured. “You’re amazing.”

They fell asleep, tangled together under the blankets, and didn’t wake up until evening.

***

Felicity woke to the weight of Oliver’s arm draped across her and the smell of his sweat beneath her nose.

Or maybe it was to the sound of Helena knocking her fist on the computer table.

Oliver, of course, was on his feet in an instant. It took Felicity a bit longer to stand up and wrap the afghan around her in a way that made Oliver’s henley seem like it covered her more completely.

“What's that tattoo?" Rory was here, too. "And... is that a scar from a shark bite??” 

“I’ve always wondered about that one,” said Helena, “but that’s not why we’re here. Oliver, did you get a text from Thea?”

Oliver frowned and looked for his phone.

“It’s in the other room,” Felicity realized. With his pants, she thought, admiring the view of his boxer briefs as he hurried to find his phone.

“Thea texted John,” Helena called after him. “Something about Roy Harper. Who apparently isn’t actually dead.”

Oliver came back into the room, fastening his jeans with one hand and holding his phone in the other. “Hopefully he isn’t dead yet,” Oliver said, grabbing a black t-shirt out of one of the supply chests and pulling it on. “Prometheus has him. And these texts are an hour old.”

“We tried calling you first,” Rory said. “And then we had to draw straws to see who would come over here.”

“There was also an argument about whether sex improves fighting ability.” Helena smirked. “We brought your bow.”

“Actually, we brought the entire suit,” Rory added. “Thea sent an address. It sounded like she was on her way there.”

Felicity picked up Oliver’s phone as he disappeared into her room to change. “This address is a vacant lot in the Glades,” she said. “There aren’t any working traffic cameras anywhere near there.”

“I know that address.” Oliver came out of the room, pulling his mask onto his head. “It used to be CNRI.”

Felicity grabbed her tablet and pulled on some clothes. “I’ll run comms from the van,” she said. “It won’t do me any good to be back here. I can track GPS from the tablet.”

***

That part of the Glades had never really recovered from the earthquake.

There were reminders of more recent history – “We Want Blood” spray-painted on an abandoned building, partially plastered over by a “United – Queen for Mayor” poster. Half-decomposed capsules that might have once held Vertigo lay in the gutters. More recent shell casings left from some shooting or another lay on top of them. Halfway into a sewer grate was a broken knife blade – maybe that was rust on it; maybe ancient blood.

Felicity drove as fast as possible, avoiding the cracked pavement and fallen bricks. John sat in the passenger seat, gun ready in case of an ambush. Oliver and all the others – Curtis, Rene, Evelyn, Rory, Helena, and Nyssa – were crowded into the back.

“Maybe we should look into buying one of those mini-schoolbuses,” Felicity suggested as she pulled the steering wheel to the left to avoid hitting another pothole. “Or something with seatbelts.”

“The rags are doing a pretty good job,” Rory whispered.

“They’re better for short people than shoulder belts,” Evelyn added.

John peered out the windshield into the gloom. “Stop,” he said.

CNRI wasn’t much more than collapsed brick walls and twisted girders, even four years later. Mist swirled in the shadows from distant streetlights. The back of the van opened, and Oliver jumped out.

He looked back, once, before turning towards the broken brick wall.

“I love you,” Felicity whispered as she watched him go.

“Open comms,” said Helena.

“Shouldn’t he be answering ‘I know’?” asked Curtis.

“ _I’m not planning to get frozen in carbonite_ ,” Oliver’s modulated voice growled from the other side of the wall.

There was stunned silence, and then everyone spoke at once.

“Did he just make a pop culture reference?” Rory whispered.

“Felicity’s rubbing off on him,” Evelyn said.

“Does this mean Felicity’s gonna wear a metal bikini?” That was Rene. Felicity turned to glare at him.

“Perhaps she will strangle Prometheus with a chain,” Nyssa said. “After she finishes with you.”

“Wait. You’ve seen _ Return of the Jedi_?” Curtis asked.

“ _Focus, people_ ,” John said through the comms.

As the team drew their weapons and followed Oliver, the mist turned into a steady rain.

***

Felicity sat in the van and waited.

And waited.

The team split into pairs: John and Rene, Nyssa and Curtis, Helena and Rory, Oliver and Evelyn. There was a sound of gunfire, and then swearing.

“ _This place is booby-trapped. Rene’s hurt_ ,” John said. “ _I’m bringing him back to the van_.”

Felicity helped drag Rene into the back and taped gauze to his shoulder. “You’ll survive this one,” she said.

“Thanks, Felicity.” Rene leaned back and closed his eyes.

“ _Nice job remembering her name_ ,” Helena said over the comms.

“ _Ow_ ,” said Curtis. “ _There’s still a lot of glass here_.”

“ _Metal, too_ ,” whispered Rory.

“ _This place would make an interesting memorial_ ,” observed Nyssa. “ _I would be interested in working with you on a design_.”

“ _Wait, Nyssa, you do architecture too?_ ” Curtis asked.

“ _I see something_ ,” Evelyn said. “ _It’s a body. Ewww. What happened to his arm?_ ”

“ _Roy?_ ” Oliver asked. “ _Roy, can you hear me?_ ”

Felicity thought she could make out some kind of moaning sound through the comms. She grabbed the med kit and climbed out of the van, then turned to Rene.

“Get in the front seat,” she ordered. “Be ready to drive if we need you. NOW!” She didn’t bother waiting to see if he obeyed.

Felicity stumbled over the fallen concrete and broken glass, looking for Roy. But before she reached him, she saw a black, leather-clad back. Prometheus.

Fortunately, he was facing the other way. Towards Thea.

His hood was down.

Thea looked back over her shoulder, but kept her arrow pointed toward Prometheus. “Ollie. Stay back.”

“No, Ollie, come on over,” said Prometheus. His voice wasn’t modulated this time. It sounded vaguely familiar. “It’s great to see you, buddy. We’ve been waiting for you to get here.”

Oliver stepped over a piece of fallen concrete and came into view. His bow lowered an inch as he stared. “Tommy?” His voice cracked. “How?”

“My father dug me up and put me in the Lazarus Pit,” Tommy said, as if it were the simplest explanation in the world.

“When?” Oliver asked.

“I don’t remember.” He laughed. “I don’t remember much.”

“You wouldn’t,” Thea said. “The Lazarus Pit is like that.”

“I do remember dead bodies. Lying in front of me, like I killed them.” Tommy’s voice shook. “I killed them.”

“Tommy,” Oliver whispered.

“And then I remember the training, and more training, and then... nothing. Until another body appeared.”

“Blood lust,” Oliver said. “Thea had it, too. And Sara.”

“Over, and over,” Tommy said. “It didn’t stop.”

“There’s a cure,” Oliver said. “Lotus... something. Thea’s better now. We could save you, too.”

“Do you know why I came back here, Ollie?” Tommy asked.

Oliver just looked at him.

“They told me about Laurel. The... people I was with. And then I remembered everything.” His voice shook. “Everything.”

Oliver took a step towards him. “Tommy...”

“You came back to Starling City. You came back and you RUINED it. You didn’t save this city. Look at it." He gestured at the collapsed walls surrounding them. "You destroyed this city. Just like you destroyed Laurel. And now it’s time for you to know how it feels... how it feels for everything to go wrong.”

Thea stepped between Tommy and Oliver.

“Stop it,” she said. “My brother hasn’t ruined anything. Laurel made her own choices. And my brother IS saving this city.”

“Your brother?” Tommy’s voice sounded like he was smiling. “Thea. Oh, Thea. You were always like a sister to me.”

Thea took a step back as Tommy reached for her.

“My sister. My little sister.” Tommy looked at Oliver. “She’s as much my sister as she is yours, Ollie. Did you ever think about that?”

“I wish I had known that before I hit on you,” Thea said. She looked behind her, toward the moaning sound that presumably was Roy. “And I wish my brothers would use their protective instincts to, oh, take me out for ice cream instead of always hurting Roy.”

“I only put an arrow in him a few times,” Oliver protested.

“I guess that means that I need to catch up.” Tommy spun and threw something towards Roy.

Thea lifted her bow. “Leave. Him. Alone.”

“You need to decide, once and for all, Thea." Tommy laughed, a creepy bad-guy kind of laugh. "Are you a Queen?” Tommy looked from Thea to Oliver and back. “Or are you a Merlyn?”

Thea’s hands shook on her bow.

“Time to decide...” Tommy said, raising another knife.

Thea looked from Tommy to Oliver and back. A slow smile crept over her face. “I’m a Merlyn.”

And then she shot three arrows into Tommy’s chest.

Thea disappeared into the night as Tommy fell to the ground, dead.


	6. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The mayor gives a speech.

“This city has been through a lot in the past few years.”

The crowd watching Oliver chuckled nervously. He wiped his hands on his suit jacket and glanced at Felicity and the others, then stepped back towards the microphone and continued.

“This memorial is just one of many places that have been destroyed. One of many places where people died.”

Felicity looked up at the broken brick walls behind him. Once CNRI’s twisted girders and rebar and concrete blocks had been just another bit of abandoned blight. But Rory had transformed them into something else. Some of the girders had become ghosts, half in the shadows of the walls, twisted in pain. Others leaned over them, wandering amongst the bodies. Mourners, grieving.

“My hope, in dedicating this place, is that Star City – my city – will finally have a place to mourn those we’ve lost. Not just in the earthquake that destroyed this particular building, but throughout the past five years and beyond.”

On one side of Felicity, Evelyn gasped out a sob and buried her face in Nyssa’s shoulder. On the other, Lyla wrapped one arm around John while JJ reached over to pull on Rene’s ear. Paul tugged Curtis’s face down for a kiss. Rory stood slightly ahead of them, acknowledging the applause for his work as the sculptor, while Helena hung back, smirking slightly, probably preparing another comment about the apparent sexual positions implied by some of the art. Felicity squeezed Roy’s remaining arm as he nodded grimly along with Oliver’s speech.

“Now, I’m not a therapist – in fact, some people have suggested that I could use one myself...”

Susan Williams laughed a bit too loudly at that.

“...but I think that it’s important to give ourselves time and space to grieve. But not just that – to let ourselves move forward. Not to fall into a cycle of vengeance, but to become the people, the city, that our loved ones would have wanted us to be.”

Felicity held her breath. Oliver had practiced the next part a hundred times, it had seemed, pacing beside their bed.

“I know a little bit about that. Most of you know that I lost my father ten years ago, and my mother three years ago. I know some of you have speculated about how those experiences turned a college drop-out into someone who could become mayor. Although, as you know, I ran unopposed.”

A laugh rippled through the crowd.

“What you don’t know is that those experiences didn’t just make me into your mayor. They made me... someone else. Something else.”

He looked to the side of the crowd and caught Felicity’s eye. She nodded back at him.

“By day, I have been doing the best that I can for this city. But sometimes, it isn’t enough.” He glanced at the reporters. “A lot of the time it isn’t enough, as many of you remind me daily.” He took a deep breath. “But by night, I continue trying to help this city. As the Green Arrow.”

A murmur ran through the crowd as cameras started to flash.

“And before that, I was the Arrow, and the Hood.” He glanced at Roy. “Other people have taken the blame for my actions over the past five years. But it is time... past time... for me to take responsibility for the things that I do, and the things that I have done.”

The crowd rustled impatiently.

“I realize that most of you didn’t mean to vote for a vigilante... if you voted at all.”

There was scattered laughter. Felicity had wondered whether the timing of that particular joke would work.

“And that continuing to serve as your mayor would be a conflict of interest. So today, I will be stepping down. Deputy Mayor Quentin Lance will serve the city until a new election can be held.”

Oliver stepped back to let Lance take the microphone as the media section erupted with questions. One question was louder than the others.

“Mr. Queen,” called the reporter. “What are you planning to do next?”

Oliver leaned back towards the microphone. “I’ll give the traditional response: I’m going to spend more time with my family.”

Felicity stepped forward as Oliver climbed down from the podium, and pulled him into a hug. “We’ll find Thea,” she whispered. “I promise.”


End file.
